NACI: Gov't of South Africa Pushes Open Source

GNU lover writes "National Advisory Council on Innovation in South Africa has issued a release concering the use of Open Source and the digital divide." The use of open source in the 3rd/2nd world is one way to get around licensing costs - at least more honest then pirating.

Comments

I rocked Bill Belsey's mom

[Eso]

Your ideas are intriguing to me. I would very much like to be subscribed to your newsletter.

Re:I rocked Bill Belsey's mom

[Klerck]

Don't forget to add me to your foes list! Fags!

Back by unpopular demand, more random number crapflooding!

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Re:I rocked Bill Belsey's mom

[MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM]

Your comment has too few words per line (currently 5.84615384615385)

Read the rest of this comment...

Re:I rocked Bill Belsey's mom

[Roto-Rooter Man]

Chapter 2: HE WHO SEES A WOMAN, AND HIS HEART IS AFFECTED, SHOULD COME TO HIS
WIFE, AND SHOULD HAVE INTERCOURSE WITH HER

Jabir reported that Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) saw a woman, and
so he came to his wife, Zainab, as she was tanning a leather and had sexual
intercourse with her. He then went to his Companions and told them: The woman
advances and retires in the shape of a devil, so when one of you sees a woman,
he should come to his wife, for that will repel what he feels in his heart.

Jabir heard Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) say: When a woman fascinates
any one of you and she captivates his heart, he should go to his wife and have
an intercourse with her, for it would repel what he feels.

Chapter 9: SEEKING CONSENT OF AL-THAYYIBIN MARRIAGE IN WORDS AND OF A VIRGIN IN
(MEANINGFUL) SILENCE

Abu Huraira (Allah be pleased with him) reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be
upon him) as having said: A woman without a husband (or divorced or a widow)
must not be married until she is consulted, and a virgin must not be married
until her permission is sought. They asked the Prophet of Allah (may peace be
upon him): How her (virgin's) consent can be solicited? He (the Holy Prophet)
said: That she keeps silence.

Chapter 10: IT IS PERMISSIBLE FOR THE FATHER TO GIVE THE HAND OF HIS DAUGHTER IN
MARRIAGE EVEN WHEN SHE IS NOT FULLY GROWN UP

'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Allah's Apostle (may peace be
upon him) married her when she was seven years old, and he was taken to his
house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her; and when he
(the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old.

Chapter 14: EXCELLENCE OF EXMANCIPATING A SLAVE-GIRL AND THEN MARRYING HER

Abu Musa reported that Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said about one
who emancipated a slave woman, and then married her, that for him there are two
rewards.

Chapter 17: IT IS NOT PERMISSIBLE TO MARRY A WOMAN WHO IS DIVORCED BY THREE
PRONOUNCEMENTS UNTIL SHE IS MARRIED TO ANOTHER MAN AND HE HAS A SEXUAL
INTERCOURSE WITH HER, AND THEN HE ABANDONS HER AND SHE COMPLETES HER 'IDDA

'A'Asha (Allah be pleased with her) reported: A person divorced his wife by
three pronouncements; then another person married her and he also divorced her
without having sexual intercourse with her. Then the first husband of her
intended to remarry her. It was about such a case that Allah's Messenger (may
peace be upon him) was asked, whereupon he said: No, until the second one has
tasted her sweetness as the first one had tasted.

Chapter 19: PERMISSIBILITY OF HAVING SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH ONE'S WIFE FROM THE
FRONT OR FROM BEHIND AVOIDING THE ANUS

Jabir (b. Abdullah) (Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Jews used to
say that when one comes to one's wife through the vagina, but being on her back,
and she becomes pregnant, the child has a squint. So the verse came down:" Your
wives are your ti'Ith; go then unto your tilth, as you may desire."

This hadith has been reported on the authority of Jabir through another chain of
transmitters, but in the hadith transmitted on the authority of Zuhri there is
an addition (of these words):" If he likes he may (have intercourse) being on
the back or in front of her, but it should be through one opening (vagina)."

Chapter 22: AL AZL (INCOMPLETE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE): COITUS INTERRUPTUS

Abu Sirma said to Abu Sa'id al Khadri (Allah he pleased with him): 0 Abu Sa'id,
did you hear Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) mentioning al-'azl? He
said: Yes, and added: We went out with Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him)
on the expedition to the Bi'l-Mustaliq and took captive some excellent Arab
women; and we desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives,
(but at the same time) we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have
sexual intercourse with them but by observing 'azl (Withdrawing the male sexual
organ before emission of semen to avoid-conception). But we said: We are doing
an act whereas Allah's Messenger is amongst us; why not ask him? So we asked
Allah's Mes- senger (may peace be upon him), and he said: It does not matter if
you do not do it, for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of
Resurrection will be born.

Chapter 23: IT IS FORBIDDEN TO HAVE INTERCOURSE WITH A PREGNANT SLAVE-WOMAN

Abu Darda' (Allah be pleased with him) related from the Prophet of Allah (may
peace be upon him) that he came upon a woman who was in the advanced stage of
pregnancy at the door of a tent. He (the Holy Prophet) said: Perhaps he (the man
accompanying her) intends to cohabit with her. They said: Yes. Thereupon Allah's
Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: I have decided to curse him with such a
curse as may go along with him to his grave. How can he own him (the child to be
born) and that is not lawful for him, and how can he take him as a servant for
that is not lawful for him?

Chapter 24: PERMISSIBILITY OF INTERCOURSE WITH A SUCKLING LADY AND DISAPPROVAL
OF 'AZL

Judama daughter of Wahb, sister of Ukkasha (Allah be pleased with her).
reported: I went to Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) along with some
persons and he was saying: I intended to prohibit cohabitation with the suckling
women, but I considered the Greeks and Persians, and saw that they suckle their
children and this thing (cohabitation) does not do any harm to them (to the
suckling women). Then they asked him about 'azl, whereupon he said. That is the
secret (way of) burying alive, and Ubaidullah has made this addition in the
hadith transmitted by al-Muqri and that is:" When the one buried alive is
asked."

Chapter 27: ONE SUCKLING OR TWO DO NOT MAKE MARRIAGE UNLAWFUL

Umm al-Fadl reported: A bedouin came to Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him)
when he was in my house and said: Allah's Apostle, I have had a wife and I
married another besides her, and my first wife claimed that she had suckled once
or twice my newly married wife, thereupon Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon
him) said: One suckling or two do not make the (marriage) unlawful.

Chapter 28: SUCKLING OF A YOUNG (BOY)

' A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Sahla bint Suhail came to
Allah's Apostle (may peace be eupon him) and said: Messengerof Allah, I see on
the face of Abu Hudhaifa (signs of disgust) on entering of Salim (who is an
ally) into (our house), whereupon Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) said:
Suckle him. She said: How can I suckle him as he is a grown-up man? Allah's
Messenger (may peace be upon him) smiled and said: I already know that he is a
young man 'Amr has made this addition in his narration that he participated in
the Battle of Badr and in the narration of Ibn 'Umar (the words are): Allah's
Messenger (may peace be upon him) laughed.

Chapter 29: IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO HAVE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH A CAPTIVE WOMAN
AFTER SHE IS PURIFIED (OF MENSES OR DELIVERY) IN CASE SHE HAS A HUSBAND, HER
MARRIAGE IS ABROGATED AFTER SHE BECOMES CAPTIVE

Defeat page widening

[IAgreeWithThisPost]

Mark Long posts as +1, mark Cmdertaco as a foe, mark foes -1, read at 0. It works!!

Re:Defeat page widening

[SweetAndSourJesus]

Ah, but the AC problem.

Damn the AC! Damn him to hell or New Jersey!

Re:Defeat page widening

[trollercoaster]

Well, except for the Anonymous Coward posts.

Re:Defeat page widening

[SumDeusExMachina]

Well, there's also the feature on the user comment preferences page that should take care of the ACs all together by letting you set their default score into negative territory, but for some reason Taco & crew haven't actually implemented this, they just want you to think they have.

Re:Defeat page widening

[Chris Burke]

Yes, but here's my question:

Why does setting the 'foe' setting to -5 not put these posts under my -1 threshold? I mean, Taco said orignially that it was supposed to be a "kill-file" like feature, and it sure as hell isn't.

I don't want to browse at 0! But since Taco 1) won't prevent page-widening posts and 2) won't make the foe-list work how it -should-, I may have to.

Re:Defeat page widening

[Anonymous Coward]

No comment can be moderated above +5.
No comment can be moderated below -1.

And that includes 'dynamic' moderations like friend/foe.

That's the way it's always been. And it's wrong.

Re:Defeat page widening

[Chris Burke]

Yeah. I mean, I knew that. And yeah, it's wrong.

Re:Defeat page widening

[rm-r]

You'd think it would be reasonably easy to fix the code to prevent this though. He has the code on in his journal, and if nothing else there's a couple of tags which could be banned

f i r S t P o S t

[beee]

this FP goes out to jonkatz, luv ya babe

no kidding.

[macsox]

why do they always have to say "it's been awhile" at the start of these things?

either publish slashback regularly, or skip saying that. foo.

Re:no kidding.

[bleckywelcky]

Haha, yeh really. I'm entirely sure what the timing on the slashbacks are anyhow. All I notice is that there are one or more a week, sometimes even skipping a week.

As for the content though, I found this demographic poll rather interesting:

Gender?
male 91%
female 9%
no response

Re:no kidding.

[Anonymous Coward]

And why do they have to put about 6 topics together...

first page lengthening post!

[Klerck]

Don't forget to add me to your foes list! Fags!

Back by unpopular demand, more random number crapflooding!

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Re:first page lengthening post!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be more impressed if you used pi for your random digits.

uh oh... im defeated!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sites just as bad as Slashdot
Unfortunately, Slashdot is not an isolated phenomenon; there are many sites out there that, in attempting to be alternatives to Slashdot, have become mere imitators, as bad as (or even worse than) the original. I'm still trying to figure out what factors lead a site down that path (a population of vocal libertarians appears to be a major factor)
Adequacy.org
Purporting to be "news for grown-ups", this site's banner calls it "the most controversial site on the web". In fact, this purely a troll site, started by ex-Slashdot and ex-Kuro5hin trolls who wanted more time and space to scream at each other like idiots (and draw people into screaming like idiots at them). I came across this site as a referrer in my weblogs; apparently there's a fanatical Microsoft devotee who links to this page religiously as a rejoinder to Linux advocates. I wonder if he's got any clue that
I use Linux (and other Unix flavors) almost exclusively whenever I need to get work done
The University of Washington lives in Microsoft's backyard, and our computer science department has strong ties to Microsoft Research. Yet we run most of our important systems (this web server, for example) on Unix.
Let me be quite clear: I do not hate Slashdot because I hate Linux. I hate Slashdot because I hate inanity. Adequacy.org manages the remarkable feat of beating Slashdot's record on that count.
Alternatives to Slashdot
You may be wondering, "Where will I get the links and news that I've been getting from Slashdot?" I'll admit that Slashdot does post some nice links once in a while---however poorly edited and poorly moderated the site as a whole is. However, I've found that for all useful content on Slashdot, there exists another source that will point me to it.
Reading other sites decreases your need for a Slashdot fix, and also makes the quality deficit at Slashdot all the more obvious. Here are my suggestions:
(Note: the following list is a work in progress. For example, the Register used to be on this list; now, after further investigation, I've moved it to the "just as bad" list.)
Science/Technology news
This depends on what kind of news you're interested in, of course. Here's a sampling of sites that will give you more targeted, more carefully selected news:
Ars Technica
An amateur (in the best sense of the word) PC user news site. The editors have a broad grasp of technical issues that is rare to find in an enthusiast site; as a result, their takes on tech tend to be uncannily on the money.
bottomquark
When Quit Slashdot! got posted to memepool, somebody (whose name I omit, to protect him from Slashdot groupthink flames) suggested bottomquark for science news. A brief skim suggests that bottomquark provides decent links for lay science enthusiasts, with no screaming 14-year-old boys.
Science Now
Daily news edited by the people who bring you Science, the premier all-sciences academic journal. Requires a (non-free) subscription, but your institution may already have one.
Wired News
Wired has its own annoying preoccupations, such as its obsession with tech stocks and Napster, but it tends to get the stories off the wires promptly and give a more clueful interpretation than, say, CNN. On the other hand, you should definitely not trust Wired News's reportage of political issues. The entire Wired organization is deeply steeped in libertarian groupthink and feels no qualms about distorting stories and quotes to advance their right-wing agenda. Caveat lector.
NewsForge
All open source news, all the time.
http://bbspot.com/toys/slashtitle/index.html
Yes, even "Slashdot" is better than Slashdot.

Re:uh oh... im defeated!

[Anonymous Coward]

It still widens IE6.
Git.

Re:uh oh... im defeated!

[Mayflower]

Still a fucking idiot, I see. PFFFFT!

Rob Melda's Conversation with Human Resources

[Anonymous Coward]

A Conversation with Human Resources
Human Resources Representative: Good afternoon, Rob Melda.

Rob Melda: Hi.

HR: As you may have heard, we have been conducting interviews with certain personnel lately. In the current economic climate, our company is looking to reduce costs wherever possible. This may also, unfortunately, include "right-sizing" in certain departments head counts. In order to be absolutely fair, we are giving the persons whose positions are being considered for right-sizing the opportunity to justify their current positions worth. Do you understand?

Rob Melda: You're going to fire me?

HR:No, Rob Melda. "Right-sizing" is not about firing people. Based on your answers to a few questions, your departments head count will be evaluated. This may include shifting of positions and responsibilities, adjustments to salaries, and in some cases individuals may be released from employment. Does this help you understand?

Rob Melda: I guess so...

HR: Alright, lets begin. According to our files, your present position is Unix Systems Administrator, is that correct?

Rob Melda: Uhh, yeah.

HR: And what responsibilities, in your view, does your position entail?

Rob Melda: I administer to the Unix systems, which includes 4 GNU/Linux Samba servers, 8 load-balanced GNU/Linux Apache web servers, and a FreeBSD firewall... Hey, if you're looking to fi.. err, "right-size" somebody, why don't you look at the two NT admin guys? After all, they have much less experience than me; they're just a bunch of paper MCSEs, which just means you memorized a bunch of stuff and passed a test. They don't have any real admin experience, like with a GNU/Linux system.

HR: We'll get to that in just a moment. In what ways would you say your expertise is vital to the continued operation of these servers?

Rob Melda: Well, I know just about everything there is to know about GNU/Linux and the associated operating system utilities.

HR: Mmmhmmm. In this email from the director of IS, he tells me that the company is considering the elimination of Linux from the environment in order to lower our TCO -- total cost of operation, I think? No, total cost of ownership. He says we are considering replacing these servers with Windows 2000 Advanced Server, running IIS 5. What do you think about this?

Rob Melda: That's a stupid idea. Winbl... err, Windows is extremely difficult to administer. You have to keep up with new security patches coming out every 2 hours, and on top of all that you have to deal with the Blue Screen of Death every day, and Microsoft charges you like 500 bucks every time you call them.

HR: So Windows is much harder to administer than Linux?

Rob Melda: That's right. As a matter of fact, if you just got rid of the Microsl... err, Microsoft boxen, you could replace them with GNU/Linux and save some money on the licenses right there.

HR: Explain this to me. If Windows is so difficult to administer, why are the NT administrators able to support twice as many servers, given their limited "real world" experience, and the fact that they are only "paper MCSEs"?

Rob Melda: Err, they're probably just not doing their job. After all, my FreeBSD box has a 279 day uptime. Their Microsh... err, Microsoft boxen are up and down every week because of security patches.

HR: Yes, the FreeBSD firewall is an interesting topic. We had an outside security consultant come in, and he found that the FreeBSD firewall had not been patched for a vulnerability in a program called "Open SSH". The NT servers were up-to-date on patches, and properly secured. In addition, a large proportion of helpdesk tickets are called in because of issues with the Samba file servers. How do you respond to this?

Rob Melda: What? Gaah, the OpenSSH exploit was only a local root exploit!! There's no reason to take down a server with almost 300 days uptime to patch it!! And those people just have problems because they are running Windows 2000 on their PCs!! Microsoft deliberately changed the SMB standard to cripple open source competitors!! If the users weren't so obsessed with using their Outlook calendars and their Powerpoint presentations, they could just use Mandrake or something with StarOffice, and everything would be fine!!

HR: There's no reason to get excited, Rob Melda. These are just questions we have to ask. Now, given that you say Linux is far easier to administer than Windows, is there any reason to believe that if we bring on another NT administrator, he or she would be unable to support the Linux and BSD systems until they get migrated to Windows 2000?

Rob Melda: No... err, YES. It is easier, but... they just wouldn't understand!! There is a lot you have to know!! It's not just all point and click and all that kiddie stuff!!! It's really hard, you have to be able to compile kernels and edit conf files!! They couldn't do what I do!!!

HR: OK, Rob Melda, I can understand your anxiety. We'll move away from that subject. Now, is there any possibility that you see for us to use your skills in another position? For instance, would you be interested in earning your MCSE to become a junior administrator when we roll out the new Windows 2000 servers?

Rob Melda: NO!! I DON'T USE THAT MICROTRASH!! IT'S NOT LIKE I'M INTERESTED IN GETTING A BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH EVERY 2 SECONDS AND SPENDING THE REST OF THE TIME LISTENING TO STUPID USERS ASKING IDIOT QUESTIONS. OPEN SOURCE DOES EVERYTHING I NEED IT TO.

HR: Well, that tells us just about everything we need to know. Rob Melda, your input is of course appreciated, and we will be taking all your comments under advisement. Your department head will be contacting you soon to let you know about any change in your employment status. Thank you for your time.

Rob Melda: BYE.

802.11a/b

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, scres ~60mpbs or less for wireless, I want gigabit wireless dangit!

Amusing anecdote:

[Anonymous Coward]

2 January 2002
Civilian death toll is not big news
OPINION/Vincent Browne
The Irish Times

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2002/0102 /opt1.htm

More than 100 civilians were killed in a small village, Qalaye Naizi, in eastern Afghanistan by bombs dropped from US aircraft on Sunday. A cameraman who visited the village after the bombing said he could see huge craters blasted by bombs. Amid the destruction were scraps of flesh, pools of blood and clumps of what appeared to be human hair. On Thursday last, US warplanes killed 40 civilians in Ghazni, south-west of Kabul. Also recently, 65 people, including tribal elders, were killed by US bombing while they were travelling in a convoy to Kabul to take part in the inauguration ceremony of the Afghan interim government.

On October 11th, more than 160 civilians were killed in a bombing raid in Karam, west of Jalalabad. Of the 60 mud huts in the village, 40 were destroyed.

On October 18th, the central market place, Sarai Shamali, near Kandahar, was bombed and 47 civilians were killed. On October 23rd, low-flying US gunships fired on the farming villages of Bori Chokar and Chowkar-karez, north of Kandahar, killing 93 civilians.

On November 10th, villages in the Khakrez district were bombed and more than 150 civilians were killed. On November 18th, bombing by US B52s killed again more than 150 civilians.

On the morning of Sunday, December 1st, B52 bombers made four passes over the village of Kama Ado, south-west of Jalalabad. The planes dropped 25 bombs each of 1,000 pounds.

Prof Marc Herold, of the departments of economics and women's studies at the University of New Hampshire, has published his estimate of the number of civilians killed in the bombardment of Afghanistan by US forces from October 7th, when the bombing started, to December 7th.

He relied only on official news agency reports, major newspapers in the US, Britain, Pakistan and India, and broadcast organisations, notably the BBC. He has calculated that in the period covered by his research the number of people killed has been 3,767, an average of 62 civilians per day. The total is well in excess of the number of people killed in the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11th (that figure is now estimated at around 3,100).

Assuming that the average killing rate has been maintained since December 7th, the total number of civilians killed in Afghanistan is now (as of New Year's Day) 5,317. Prof Herold acknowledges that his tabulation is based only on killings reported in the mainstream media. What of killings in remote areas of Afghanistan which never got recorded in the major news outlets? What of the people who have later died of wounds inflicted by the bombing?

And how about the number of people who have died as a direct result of the war; people denied access to food aid (over one million people were said by the aid agencies to be at risk at the outset of the bombing), people who have died because electricity was cut off, because hospitals were bombed, because their access to food was shut down?

For the most part, the media in the US, Britain and here have been indifferent to this slaughter. It is not that these atrocities have got no coverage, although precious little, it is that they are rarely highlighted and never drawn together to present the full awful picture of what is going on.

For instance, yesterday's New York Times carried no mention of the killing of the 100 civilians in Qalaye Naizi on Sunday night. The Washington Post carried the story in an inside page, as did the Los Angeles Times. There was no mention in the Boston Globe.

Sky News and CNN carried the story in its news bulletins on Monday but in secondary slots after reports of the launch of the euro (which was hardly news at all since we all knew about this for years).

As I was out of Ireland on Monday I don't know how RTÉ television news treated the story but it rated behind a thoroughly innocuous statement from the European Central Bank on the 1p.m. radio news. The RTÉ website news carried no mention of the bombing on Monday evening. When stories of these slaughters are carried at all they are prefaced by denials by the US military. And even when the US military acknowledge a slaughter, it is carried as though it was of no consequence.

When a Pentagon spokesman was asked about the bombing of Chowkar-karez on October 23rd when at least 93 civilians were killed, he said: "The people are dead because we wanted them dead." When asked about the incident, Donald Rumsfeld said: "I cannot deal with that particular village." And that was that.

And, of course, nobody in government or in politics has a word to say about it, not in the US, not in Britain, and certainly not here.

This is not quite a new barbarism as the obscenities engaged in by both sides in the second World War, and then carried to a refinement in the Vietnam war, were the precursors of all this.

But there was a hope (wasn't there?) after the Vietnam war that we had entered into a more civilised era; that no more would the slaughter of innocents be condoned or acquiesced in.

But we should have known. We remained silent while Iraq was bombarded in 1991 and Yugoslavia in 1999, and the new canon of "humanitarian bombing" was sanctioned. Where next? Iraq again? Or Somalia? Or Sudan? What matter.

Have a happy new year.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[matman]

I wish that I could trust what you're posting. However, I don't really need to trust it. Historically, the United States Gov hasn't really promoted the 'compassion' that it likes to portray. I mean, how about Iraq and the sanctions against it? That action alone has killed many many more people than the World Trade Center attack. It's too bad that there's not more public outrage over these atrocities. I hope that soon the Ministry of Truth will slip, and the general public will notice.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[rossz]

Those numbers were refuted long ago. The casualty reports cited have no basis in reality. The actual number of civilian deaths is closer to 1000. Professor Herold's estimate is so far off because he counted the same casualty reports from different sources together, though duplicating most counts.

While civilian deaths are regrettable, they are impossible to avoid.

The number of lives saved is estimated to be in excess of 100,000 over the next few years, mostly woman and children. They have been saved because food supplies can now reach famine stricken areas. Something not possible when the Taliban ran things.

Next time you post flamebait, at least try to get your facts straight you mindless toad.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

Hi.

I hate to burst your optimistic bubble... But the public knows, and they don't give a shit. Because when it's us killing them, it's okay. We always have a good reason.

As for me, I'm useless because I'm too cynical to think I could actually do anything but point out how fucked everything is and how right I am to be cynical. So, no need to point it out how useless I am, I already know. :)

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

Does it really matter if it's 1000 vs 3000? Ok, so the numbers were bad, but the point about unknown deaths remains as well. But in the end it doesn't matter. Many civilians are dead. Why are we attacking them? They killed civilians. Is this tacit Hammurabi-style "eye for an eye" justice, or is it just okay when we do it?

Oh, 100,000 lives will be saved. That's our justification. If that had anything to do with anything, why didn't we root out the Taliban before they attacked us? And if that 100k saved means 1k dead is OK, then certainly it wouldn't make a difference if the number dead was 3k -- the number dead in the WTC. Which would make what -they- did OK. And you thought al Queda wasn't a humanitarian organization! They save lives!

Obviously I don't believe that blowing up the WTC was justified. But neither are the deaths of civilians at our hands.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Anonymous Coward]

comparing civilian deaths from their side to ours is ridiculously flawed. we don't intentionally go blowing up buildings that have no military purpose in order to kill thousands of civilians for all the world to see. yes, the US has killed civilians in Aghanistan all in all we hit their military targets. civilian deaths are collateral damage (cold term, but true). intent is what matters.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

Indeed, intent matters. But my observation is that our cavalier attitude toward killing civilians ("collateral damage") makes our intent not so much different from theirs. It is exactly the point that treating civilian casualties as "regrettable but unavoidable" in the pursuit of our goals makes us as culpable as them for those civilians we kill.

If it is intent that matters, then in this case the specific target does not. You, I, and the military leaders of the US, knew that civilians casualties would result from our attacks. Yet we performed them anyway. Similarly, al Queda knew civilians would die, but they did it anyway. In both cases, these are "acceptable losses" in the pursuit of our goals. How are they different? Is being able to hope/pretend that civilians won't die because you're attacking "military targets" so important, when the hope is fundamentaly empty? I say no. Because for all the talk about "regretable civilian casualties", not a single fewer bomb is dropped as a result.

You can hang on the fact that bin Laden attacked a civilian target, but that's a result of the difference in capability, not intent. al Queda doesn't have fleets of F-15s to drop smart-bombs. The goal of al Queda isn't to kill civilians -- that's just the means they have at their disposal. Isn't this obvious? We've already demonstrated what the outcome of a direct military conflict is. Faced with that reality, can't you see them sitting around in their "war room" talking about the unfortunate "collateral damage"?

I think the intent is the same. Our goals are more important than their deaths. Which means, that if what you say is true -- intent matters -- the only difference between the US government and terrorists is that the goverment has a bigger budget.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's such BS. The fact is that Sadam was given sufficient resources to take care of his people but *not* to maintain a military. His country is also receiving millions of dollars in private humanitarian aid. The truth is that we thought that Sadam would use his money to take care of his people or get overthrown in the backlash. He knew better than us though and took the North Korea option. While people are starving and dying in the countryside of NK, the cities are sufficiently stocked and the military well fed and maintained. If his people are dying it's his own fscking doing.

Sorry, I know about many fscked up things our government has done...but this ain't one of them.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

To a point, I agree. Again, Saddam made a clear choice, and he has to be held accountable for it.

But when he'd made that choice, and the sanctions were demonstrably not working for what we had hoped, then wouldn't continuing them be considered fscked?

I also wonder why exactly "option C" didn't occur to us as a likely outcome. Did we really think that the man who used chemical weapons on his own people wouldn't keep that money to himself? Surely not. GB Sr. may be many things, but an idiot he was not. He had to know that to protect his power, Saddam would make his people suffer. Knowing this, if we really cared about his people, we wouldn't have imposed sanctions. I conclude that our hope was that indeed he would be overthrown. And I'd say that overthrowing a government by indirectly making its people suffer to the point that they revolt is pretty fscking fscked.

But that's just me.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[tbo]

If Saddam is so fucking concerned about his citizens, why doesn't he allow the UN Weapons inspectors back? Many of the sanctions were imposed because he kicked them out a few years ago.

I remember before the Gulf War, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Bonehead peaceniks like you said that we should impose sanctions, not go to war. Go to war we did, and the peaceniks protested and howled. But then, when Iraq started rebuilding its military and developing weapons of mass destruction, Clinton went the sanction route, and the peaceniks are crying out again.

So, what's it going to be? Sanctions or war? What the fuck are they supposed to do? Hand Saddam a Congressional Medal of Honour every time he invades a weaker neighbour or massacres some of his own citizens?

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Anonymous Coward]

"I mean, how about Iraq and the sanctions against it? That action alone has killed many many more people than the World Trade Center attack."

You are a liar. The sanctions ALONE have not killed ANYONE. They have been used, certainly claimed, as a contributing factor by Saddam, who knows that IDIOTS and LIARS (like you) will happily join his campaign of forcing the West to choose between A) WAGING ALL-OUT WAR AGAINST EVIL and B) DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT EVIL, by eliminating the "economic sanctions" option.

Besides, it isn't the JOB of the US GOVERNMENT to "promote compassion". That's the job of PEOPLE like YOU.

Instead of taking care of some poor children (locally or in Iraq), you waste your time LYING ABOUT US SANCTIONS just to trash the US GOVERNMENT -- a government without which you'd likely be dead or in prison, given your anti-government leanings and tendency to speak out about them.

So try practicing COMPASSION instead of lying, and we'll all be better off.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[dvdeug]

If it is intent that matters, then in this case the specific target does not. You, I, and the military leaders of the US, knew that civilians casualties would result from our attacks. Yet we performed them anyway.

But if we had an easy option, we wouldn't. Our goal is not civilian death.

You can hang on the fact that bin Laden attacked a civilian target, but that's a result of the difference in capability, not intent.

Bull. You think that they couldn't have hit a military target with those planes? Nellis Air Force Base could have been hit without much problem. There are many other military installations that are easy targets. Yet they chose a purely civilain target. That's intent.

Our goals are more important than their deaths.

Our goal is to save lives from further civilian attacks. Thousands more people die, versus a few hundred.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Anonymous Coward]

"But my observation is that our cavalier attitude toward killing civilians ("collateral damage") makes our intent not so much different from theirs. It is exactly the point that treating civilian casualties as "regrettable but unavoidable" in the pursuit of our goals makes us as culpable as them for those civilians we kill."

Thanks for advertising your MORAL IDIOCY for all to read, Mr. Burke.

That you can't figure out the difference between A) WILLFULLY KILLING AS MANY INNOCENT MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN AS POSSIBLE WITH WHATEVER WEAPONS ARE ON HAND and B) ACCIDENTALLY KILLING INNOCENTS AS A RESULT OF USING PRECISELY (but not perfectly) TARGETED MUNITIONS IN AN OBVIOUS ATTEMPT TO STOP MORE MASS MURDERS simply shows what a pathetic excuse for a human being you are.

Get this, Mr. Burke: if the USA was even 1% as uninterested in preserving ALL HUMAN LIFE, regardless of RACE, CREED, RELIGION, and GENDER, given the technologies it has NOW and has had for DECADES, it would already have MURDERED OVER A BILLION PEOPLE.

Just as Al Queda, bin Laden, and others WOULD HAVE DONE if they had even 1% of the weaponry the USA now has.

So, an idiot like yourself looks ONLY at collateral damage and says "gee, same numbers, the perpetrators must be equally evil".

Whereas a THOUGHTFUL person says "gee, Al Queda plots and schemes in caves for years, does their best to kill as many innocent people as possible by attacking not only a MILITARY target but an INTERNATIONAL CIVILIAN one using CIVILIAN-CARRYING 'MISSILES', whereas the USA, an open DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC, which could wipe out ALL HUMAN BEINGS several times over with nukes, takes on these mass-murderers and manages to kill only a TINY FRACTION of INNOCENTS by accident, compared to what it could do on purpose", and concludes that OBVIOUSLY, the USA is VASTLY MORE MORAL, RATIONAL, and TRUSTWORTHY than anything remotely related to Al Queda.

Hey STUPID, maybe the reason why Americans seem so "CAVALIER" about collateral damage is because we've ALREADY BUILT SUFFICIENT SAFEGUARDS INTO OUR MILITARY that we don't see the point of running around crying and whining every time a precision munition accidentally hits a hospital? That we already UNDERSTAND, as best we can, that we can't do all that much BETTER right now, that, thanks to Western COMPASSION FOR INNOCENTS, even citizens of ENEMY NATIONS, we've gone through CENTURIES of improving weapons of war so they CAN be more precise?

Meanwhile, what has militant Islam done but embrace the concept that THE MORE INNOCENTS THEY KILL, THE EASIER IT IS TO PERSUADE ENEMIES TO SURRENDER? Where are the precision munitions being developed and used by organizations like Al Queda so they can AVOID killing innocent civilians in enemy nations? For that matter, can you point to ANY rational discussion among prominent militant Muslims that actually identifies most victims of 9/11 as "innocent"?

No, of course you can't, because while MOST OF THE MILITANT WORLD, especially LEFT-WING COMMUNIST NATIONS, has tended to treat innocents, intellectuals, queens, priests, Jews, whatever, as outright enemies on par with enemy soldiers, the WESTERN WORLD, with the USA forming the NOSECONE, has made SUBSTANTIAL SACRIFICES of its young men and its economic progress by STRIVING TO PRESERVE INNOCENT LIFE while waging war to preserve its own national and cultural identity.

Sadly, while it's true that there'll always be a few sociopaths like bin Laden who find ways to accumulate power over others, the existence of people like yourself, expressing COMPLETE AND UTTER MORAL IDIOCY as if it constitutes RATIONAL THINKING (when it's really PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL MENTAL MASTURBATION in a PUBLIC PLACE, imo) is something that is NOT inevitable in a rational society.

But, you think the USA and Al Queda are morally equivalent, so give up all your ties to the West and go live with fundamentalist Muslims. Surely you'll notice no difference in how you're treated?

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Anonymous Coward]

What will happen in a few months when the new Afghan government decides it cannot resist the easy money that the opium farmers bring into the country, and the Drug Nazis get wind of this, and Afghanistan, although a Partner in the War On Terrorism, is now an Enemy in the War on Drugs?

The US has focused so much energy on cocaine and marijuana, why don't we have SF operators all over Asia "assisting" in the crackdown on opium poppy agriculture?

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

But if we had an easy option, we wouldn't. Our goal is not civilian death.

I think the same could be said for them. I can't prove it, but it's a consistent hypothesis. Their "goal" isn't to kill civilians, either. Saying it is is dismissive. If they had an easy option, they wouldn't.

Bull. You think that they couldn't have hit a military target with those planes? Nellis Air Force Base could have been hit without much problem. There are many other military installations that are easy targets. Yet they chose a purely civilain target. That's intent.

Bull. Only someone defending what is debateably the world's most powerful military would use this excuse. I mean, even I can see that hitting one air force base isn't going to do anything. They only had those planes -- they had to make them count, and no air force base "counts" that much. Remember, they can't match us militarily? Even obliterating an air force as large as Nellis isn't going to change that in the slightest.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Anonymous Coward]

WEll fellow AC. How about this. WE jsut release 26 people we captured in a bloody attack (18 dead as well on thier side) and it turns out those people we were so sure were alkeida or taliban were just regular joes who supporeted the new government.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

I think the intent is the same. Our goals are more important than their deaths. Which means, that if what you say is true -- intent matters -- the only difference between the US government and terrorists is that the goverment has a bigger budget.

Let me get this straight: you believe that since what the USA wants to achieve with its attacks and Al Queda wanted to achieve with its attacks can both be described as "goals", that you can therefore treat those two "goals" as if it were an identity variable, divide it out of the equation, leaving only differences in budget and capabilities, and thus prove no moral distinction between the US government and Al Queda?

How interesting.

Thankfully, most rational people recognize that the goals of the respective organizations are exactly what make one more moral and ethical than the other.

Which is why vastly more rational people strive to leave the domain of one for that of the other than the other way around -- even before 2001-09-11.

Here, try this example out, so you don't get so confused by your anti-American hate.

Marsha and Billy live in the same town. Billy kicks cats, molests children, rapes women, steals money, and so on.

Marsha tells people Billy is a bad person and should be resisted, but too many townsfolk practice "tolerance" by trying various tactics like buying Billy off, setting him up with sisters and daughters (who he then rapes), and so on.

Finally Billy decides he's not getting whatever he wants out of life because Marsha says such bad things about him, but thinks nobody's going to stand up to him, so to teach Marsha a lesson, since he can't kill her because of her strength, skill, etc., he kills her mother, father, sister, and two of her friends.

The townsfolk, "up in arms" but not really prepared to do battle themselves (having accepted the dogma that buying off evil-doers turns them into good-doers so long that they've neglected to arm themselves adequately against evil), come out in support for Marsha and accept that she's gonna have to do some serious butt-kicking, though some express "concern" that she not be too "violent".

Marsha, knowing that killing Billy is necessary (there being no practical law-enforcement system in town, equivalent to the present international situation), she undertakes to kill him herself, rather than let him kill even more people.

But Billy, being somewhat clever, disguises himself, hides himself, does whatever it takes to escape Marsha, who he recognizes as being fully capable of killing him were he to be out in the open, doing battle on a "fair" basis.

Marsha discovers he's hiding in an orphanage, has a gun, and has killed a few kids there to gain control of the local "authorities" (those in charge of the orphanage).

So she arms herself, goes in, guns ablaze, and kills Billy as well as two kids.

The "compassionate" townsfolk express alarm at Marsha's killing of the two kids.

But most of Marsha' supporters just grit their teeth and say "she done what had to be done".

Then Chris Burke comes along and says "since both Marsha and Billy killed innocents, and since Marsha plainly knew she might accidentally do so by going after Billy but still put her goals over the lives of those kids, the only difference between Marsha and Billy is that Marsha is stronger, bigger, and smarter -- but not the least more moral, compassionate, or ethical. After all, Marsha and her supporters didn't express sufficient 'concern' over the two kids she killed."

Now, since Chris Burke can't possibly miss the fact that Marsha has been openly participating in fairly rational discussions about how to resist evil, whereas Billy has actively practiced evil and tended to avoid any rational, open discussion of his acts; and the fact that Marsha acts out of self-sacrificing risk-taking to save the lives of others; Chris Burke clearly understands that the only thing achievable by speaking out against the killing of innocents generally, such as by practicing the moral calculus he proposes, is the shutting down of people like Marsha, but not people like Billy, who are unmoved by any verbeage not backed up by force of the sort Marsha brings to the table.

Conclusion? Chris Burke wishes for the world to have no Marshas in it whatsoever, but is unwilling to do anything practical or effective about the Billys of the world.

Lesson for today: those who refuse to reason clearly about, and then resist, evil, ultimately bear responsibility for the "collateral damage" that occurs when someone else has to do it for them. They may then cry "evil" over the collateral damage; since they didn't resist it previously, the time to avoid it subsequently has passed, and their rhetoric rings hollow.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

Even obliterating an air force as large as Nellis isn't going to change that in the slightest.

But obliterating four civilian aircraft full of innocents, two office buildings full of innocents, and so on, is going to change that?

So, please, tell us all how Al Queda bettered their prospects by carefully calculating that 2001-09-11 would achieve their objectives (which you appear to be claiming are morally neutral with respect to those of the US government) with sufficiently greater likelihood than attacking Nellis instead to justify the willful murder of thousands of innocent civilians.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

why didn't we root out the Taliban before they attacked us?

Because, if we had, moral idiots (to borrow a phrase from an anonymous coward) like yourself would then claim that the collateral damage inevitably suffered as a result of a "needless campaign" against the Taliban proved that the USA is evil.

If the world's leadership had a moral spine and an adequate degree of moral understanding, organizations like Al Queda, the PLO, and so on, would never be able to flourish like they do in the first place.

That a comparatively few innocents get dusted in the efforts needed to slap down those committed to mass-murder to promote their agenda is a sad, sad result of moral idiocy on the part of the world's (primarily left-wing) elite leadership, which generally prefers buying off and appeasing terrorists (like one who won the Nobel Peace Prize a short while ago).

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

But when he'd made that choice, and the sanctions were demonstrably not working for what we had hoped, then wouldn't continuing them be considered fscked?

By that reasoning, boycotts against Nike, Nestle, and so on, were fscked for as long as they didn't immediately achieve their objective, since they inevitably (though indirectly, like US sanctions against Iraq), caused innocent people to suffer.

Of course, that's not to make the situations morally equivalent. If, instead of the boycotts, people concerned about poorly paid workers and such bought more, the end result would not clearly have been that the corporations involved would end up with weapons of mass destruction and the means to use them.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to wonder, so I'll ask: to who or what do you owe your education in moral issues, teaching you to reason (if I may use that word loosely) the way you do?

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[rossz]

Extremely well said.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

Thanks for advertising your MORAL IDIOCY for all to read, Mr. Burke.

Big words. I see you didn't think it was worth advertising your own plain-ol' regular idiocy, Mr. Coward. I mean hell, you can think I'm wrong, but at least a non-simian could have strung some logical thoughts together to try to show why. But I guess to you the opposite of "MORAL IDIOCY" is "MORAL DISSENTARY". Honestly, I've never seen someone spew more blather from their gut and call it "rational" before.

So, an idiot like yourself looks ONLY at collateral damage and says "gee, same numbers, the perpetrators must be equally evil".

Only someone so thoroughly afraid of thinking about reality could think calling dead people "collateral damage" changes anything. You have an action which you know will kill civilians, even though they aren't your "target". You take the action. Civilians die. You then say it was an accident. They're "collateral damage". You're not responsible, because you "didn't mean to". Only a fool like you would think that's logicaly tenable. A doctor who kills her patient because she took an action that would almost certainly result in death doesn't get off the hook just because she didn't want them to die.

thanks to Western COMPASSION FOR INNOCENTS, even citizens of ENEMY NATIONS, we've gone through CENTURIES of improving weapons of war so they CAN be more precise?

You are a moron of epic proportions. I say this because a moron of normal stature would be able to see that the past centuries have not been spent making weapons more precise to save civilian lives, but making them more deadly. From the trebuchet to the gatling gun to the cluster bomb, you are proven a fool again and again.

Weapons are made more precise because they are more effective that way, not because of any notion of "saving lives" (except those of our own soldiers). You've seen films of bomb runs on German factories in WWII, didn't you? Did you see the number of planes they flew, and number of bombs they had to drop? Smart bombs that can drop down the chimney of a factory and explode are much more efficient and more importantly more likely to destroy the target. How can you even utter the statement that weapons are developed out of "compassion for innocents" in regards to the same country that invented the air-burst incendiary bomb and Agent Orange?

Meanwhile, what has militant Islam done but embrace the concept that THE MORE INNOCENTS THEY KILL, THE EASIER IT IS TO PERSUADE ENEMIES TO SURRENDER?

Maybe they learned it from us. After all, wasn't that the justification behind completely destroying two entire cities in WWII? Wasn't that partly why General LeMay conducted his fire-bombing campaign against Tokyo, killing more than at Hiroshima, to show he could do the same thing without the bomb? And it worked.

Feel free to try to justify why that was different, or why that was okay. I may even agree, depending on how well you can parrot smarter people's arguments. But that supports my point -- when it is us faced with a situation in which we can achieve our goals only through massive and deliberate slaughter of civilians (and debateably no other way), we do it, and you don't call us "evil".

Where are the precision munitions being developed and used by organizations like Al Queda so they can AVOID killing innocent civilians in enemy nations?

Because we didn't supply them with those types of munitions when we were arming them during the Russian invasion? Seriously, can you so easily pretend ignorance of the realities of the relative budget of our military vs that of al queda? Even the most slightly logical person would recognize that al queda simply doesn't have the resources to compete with us militarily, and thus you can't judge them because they can't.

It's a sign of just how far you are from rational that your whole "argument" depends on the fact that now, today we have the ability to launch smart bombs and cruise missles that minimize civilian death. Before Dessert Storm, we didn't have that capability -- and it made no difference. We carpet-bombed, napalmed, and clustered-bombed to achieve our goals, and the civilian casualties did nothing to stop us then. Our intent is obvious.

You poor fool. Do you -really- think that if al queda had a military as large and advanced as ours that they would resort to blowing office buildings? Don't you think they'd much rather just drive our military out of the region? Don't you think it is the fact that this is clearly impossible that leaves them with what options they have? Do you think our government is truly any different, and if they were faced with the same choice they wouldn't choose the same? I think this is demonstrably false.

For that matter, can you point to ANY rational discussion among prominent militant Muslims that actually identifies most victims of 9/11 as "innocent"?

Since "innocent" isn't a rational word, I can't say I'm surprised. What difference does "innocence" make? What are they innocent of? If everyone in the building had been a convicted child molester, would it have been a commendable action? No one deserves to die like that, and being "innocent" doesn't mean anything. Rational people (who aren't trying to inspire an emotional reaction in non-rationals such as yourself) think more in terms of civilians. Miltary personnel don't deserve to die, but at least they have accepted the risk. At least in countries that don't have mandatory military service.

with the USA forming the NOSECONE, has made SUBSTANTIAL SACRIFICES of its young men and its economic progress by STRIVING TO PRESERVE INNOCENT LIFE while waging war to preserve its own national and cultural identity.


I see the higher cognitive portions of your brain have been replaced by a hamster running in a wheel labeled "PATRIOTISM". This statement is laughably stupid in so many ways.

First, if you can actually demonstrate how a blown-up building is a threat to our cultural identity then I'll take back every bad thing I said about you, and fly to the moon using only the power of love. Unless you think our cultural identity somehowe involves thinking we're imortal and loved by everyone, in which case all bets are off because you're more out of touch than you sound. The only threat to our cultural identity is our willingness to let our government take more power for itself at the cost of our freedom in the name of a tragedy. But your Patriot Hamster Brain has sucked up what we've been told, and you sacrifice the very thing you think you're protecting.

Second, if you think our government has been "STRIVING TO PRESERVE INNOCENT LIFE", your Patriot Hamster has been busy making up new propoganda for you to believe. How hard did this government strive in Somalia before they gave up? They didn't even acknowledge Rwanda until there was virtually no more "innocent" life to protect.

Third, how can you call our government the "NOSECONE" of Western humanitarian efforts? In the UN summit on race, when Israel's tendency to kill a hundred palestinians for every dead Israeli soldier was brought up, two countries walked out. Israel... and us. Not even the rest of the Western World sees us like you describe. Not even our government tries to portray itself as the preservers of all that is good that you suggest.

But, you think the USA and Al Queda are morally equivalent, so give up all your ties to the West and go live with fundamentalist Muslims. Surely you'll notice no difference in how you're treated?

I see you are too stupid to even grasp the difference between moral superiority and nice place to live. Your Hamster is too busy running full tilt to let the thought in that I'm saying we -are- responsible for deaths resulting directly from our actions, and that this is separate from issues like personal liberty.

It should be offensive to all intelligent people that someone so obviously dominated by emotional thought and blind, fanciful patriotism would even utter the word "rational" as though they are capable of recognizing it.

Or, in short: You are an idiot. If you disagree with me, find someone with a brain to argue for you.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[dvdeug]

Their "goal" isn't to kill civilians, either.

Our goal is to stop terrorist attacks on our soil, and stop the resulting deaths and injuries, which we try to follow with minimal civilian deaths. Their goal regards killing civilians as a good thing, and doesn't care how many on their side die.

I mean, even I can see that hitting one air force base isn't going to do anything. They only had those planes -- they had to make them count, and no air force base "counts" that much.

They made them count, but in a way that would piss off the rest of the world. Had they attacked an Air Force base, it would have been a sign that they weren't killing unrelated civilians. A show of strength (and everyone would have known what they could have hit), without the mass death.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

But obliterating four civilian aircraft full of innocents, two office buildings full of innocents, and so on, is going to change that?

No, we'll still be militarily indomitable. Clearly, military might is not feasible. Thus other methods become necessary.

So, please, tell us all how Al Queda bettered their prospects by carefully calculating that 2001-09-11 would achieve their objectives (which you appear to be claiming are morally neutral with respect to those of the US government) with sufficiently greater likelihood than attacking Nellis instead to justify the willful murder of thousands of innocent civilians.

First, I'm not claiming moral neutrality with respect to the US government. I'm clamining equivalency, a lack of superiority. Neither actions are morally "neutral".

Second, I'm not claiming justification. I was very explicit about that, so I can't see how you missed it. I'm claiming not that murdering thousands of innocent civilians is justifiable, but that it isn't justifiable when we do it either.

Third, the way in which what they did could have helped is to demonstrate the ability to hurt us despite lacking military strength. Since our military might can't be beaten, they tried to break the spirit behind it. It's the same reason we dropped a nuke on Hiroshima -- to say "look, if you don't give in, your people will die". They obviously failed in their gambit because 1) it turns out our 'spirit' is more likely to turn vengeful than be broken and 2) they didn't do nearly enough damage to cause us to fold like Japan did.

That's speculation, by the way. An expert on terrorist history would be able to give a more accurate explanation. But you don't need to be an expert to see that the odds of having an effect are better than trying to match our military muscle.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

Um, right. But what you ignore by taking my statement out of context is that I was questioning the assertion that our campaign has anything to do with "saving lives" of those who suffer under the Taliban.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

By that reasoning, boycotts against Nike, Nestle, and so on, were fscked for as long as they didn't immediately achieve their objective, since they inevitably (though indirectly, like US sanctions against Iraq), caused innocent people to suffer.

Well, there are actually some important differences. First, you'd have to justify the suffering you're expecting (vs demonstrable suffering in the Iraqi case) as such boycotts are in force. Second, clearly Nike is more succeptible to such economic leverage. Nike is much easier to force because a boycott directly threatens the thing that keeps them alive -- shoe sale income. All the 3rd world's child labor won't save them if no one buys their shoes. Whereas with the sanctions of Iraq, you are merely forcing a choice between things, one of which is what keeps Saddam alive -- his military.

the end result would not clearly have been that the corporations involved would end up with weapons of mass destruction and the means to use them.

Which is a way in which the situations are similar. Thanks for pointing that out.

Surely it isn't guaranteed that weapons of mass destruction would arrise merely from lifting economic sanctions. Surely it is possible to differentiate between those sanctions and nuclear regulators.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to wonder, so I'll ask: to who or what do you owe your education in moral issues, teaching you to reason (if I may use that word loosely) the way you do?


Literature. I read a lot. Stephen Donaldson to Franz Kafka. George Orwell to the Apostle Paul (and friends). Not an exhaustive list, but I've hit the major ones with the last 3 at least. That, keeping my eyes open, and always thinking "there must be another way to look at this" has served me pretty well.

I'd ask you the same question, but I know already: using alien technology from area 51, George Bush beamed what he wanted you to think directly onto your brain.

Okay, that's probably not it... But you can't tell just by looking at the results!

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

Thankfully, most rational people recognize that the goals of the respective organizations are exactly what make one more moral and ethical than the other.

Yes. I think that falls under the heading intent, which I made several lengthy posts about. I say under, because goals are a function of intent. Or, as I'm using the terms, intent could be considered "disposition" of a sort, a more far-reaching aspect than a "goal", used in the sense of something more short-term.

Here, try this example out, so you don't get so confused by your anti-American hate.

If you truly think I'm motivated by anti-American hate, either you are dumb or I've managed to grossly misrepresent myself. Don't be offended, I actually think it is the latter. I can't blame you for jumping to that conclusion since I have the rather non-mainstream opinion that we aren't the best people on earth. But that's not hate... That's called "reality". I actually like this country a lot.

[Snipped a long analogy which is a stinging indictment of my backwards thinking and broken reasoning... or at least it would be if it was analogous to reality]

You're analogy is a little off, but I'll help steer it toward reality.

First, a little backstory. Billy learned how to kill and rape because he was trained how by Marsha herself. Billy was being beaten up by Tina, a woman Marsha hated, and she gave Billy the training for free because of this.

Second, Marsha herself was hardly a saint. She'd committed murder and rape herself on a number of occasions. The townsfolk knew, but they don't like to talk about it, and pretend it never happened, or that she "had a good reason". She treated them nice, and they just couldn't admit they'd been taken in. It'd all happened on the other side of town, so it was easy to ignore. Plus, since she was the biggest and meanest, there was a sense of safety in having her around.

But they never liked Billy to begin with. His crimes they didn't have to ignore.

Third, the reason Billy isn't getting what he wants out of life is because what he wants in life is for Marsha to leave his house. She practically moved in. She'd already taken the porch facing the lake and given it to one of her homeless chums, without asking anyone else if they minded. And she talked a lot about letting him and his friends (other graduates of Marsha's "training program") make their own decisions... and she did, so long as she approved. She helped them commit crimes when they got in fights with each other. And she made it clear she wasn't going anywhere; "and you'll like it" she added menacingly.

When the fighting started, some were rather worried about the lengths Marsha would go to. They realized what Billy did was bad and he needed to be stopped, but they also realized that, really, Marsha was in a problem of her own creation (and they were paying the price for). And in the end she didn't give a shit about anyone who got caught in the crossfire. She'd do what it took to keep the townsfolk from turning on her, sure -- which wasn't much, since they didn't want to. If she didn't force their hand, she was safe.

They realized that Marsha didn't really take any risks at all. She was huge, strong, and the only skills Billy had to fight her were ones Marsha had given him. And they remember how "open" the dialogue was. There was only one thing you could say to not be branded as a "Billy-lover" or "Marsha-hater". The others didn't care about history. Their friends had died, and that was all that mattered. Perspective was an enemy, since it damaged resolve. They quelched it willingly.

And then, the prologue.

Marsha didn't kill everyone, of course.
But those left didn't necessarily feel "rescued" as the townsfolk had assumed they would. They buried their friends, who hadn't been involved at all except to be near Billy when Marsha burst in. They had never really liked or trusted Marsha -- they knew her past -- but they also didn't condone Billy's violence. But then, reacting to their loss much as most of the townsfolk had, they suddenly saw Marsha in a different light. Suddenly, Billy didn't seem so crazy. They still disliked violence, but what else could they do? In an ironic reflection of the previous words of Marsha's supporters, they gathered together, grit their teeth, and said "We must do what has to be done".

Repeat endlessly, in various villages of different sizes, over and over... and you have human history.

If I've learned one thing from this, it's that learning history doesn't stop it from repeating -- it just lets you recognize it when it's happening.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

No, we'll still be militarily indomitable. Clearly, military might is not feasible. Thus other methods become necessary.

Necessary to do what, pray tell?

Seems to me you keep willfully omitting that tiny little item that might break down your whole argument that the USA is in no way morally superior, or at least behaving in a morally superior way, to Al Queda.

Seems to me that waging a war to, e.g. in just one dimension, ensure the freedom of peoples (especially US citizen) to practice the religion they individually choose is morally superior to Al Queda's waging war (I'll call it that, since you try to equate their terrorism to our war) to impose their religion throughout the world.

So, please, either own up to that, or explain just why it is "necessary" for Al Queda to murder thousands of innocent US citizens. "Achieve their aims" ain't the answer: WHAT ARE THEIR AIMS, in your words? What are the corresponding aims of the US government?

First, I'm not claiming moral neutrality with respect to the US government. I'm clamining equivalency, a lack of superiority. Neither actions are morally "neutral".

Sorry, that's what I meant by "morally neutral... with respect to...": moral equivalency.

You are claiming that since we accidentally killed some civilians while trying to get at known mass-murderers, we're morally no better than the mass-murderers who willingly murdered many civilians.

You try to support their claim by presenting some kind of "cosmic fairness" argument: "Al Queda has a weaker military, therefore it is necessary for them to murder civilians".

But you consistently ignore one of my points, which is: the US has an imperfect military, therefore it is impossible for it to exist, especially be deployed in any useful fashion, without accidentally taking innocent human life.

You equate the two situations morally. In my opinion, that makes you a moral idiot, just as someone would be a mathematical idiot if they equated two expressions that were clearly not identical by simply renaming two independent variables to the same name and then canceling them -- regardless of how much pseudo-intellectual hand-waving they engaged in to justify their results.

Second, I'm not claiming justification. I was very explicit about that, so I can't see how you missed it. I'm claiming not that murdering thousands of innocent civilians is justifiable, but that it isn't justifiable when we do it either.

I didn't think I was saying you were claiming justification -- just that you were, by trying to justify some degree of immorality by Al Queda, you were hoping to thereby convict the US as a whole of equivalent immorality, for doing what is clearly necessary for its defense, by most any rational person's assessment.

Third, the way in which what they did could have helped is to demonstrate the ability to hurt us despite lacking military strength. Since our military might can't be beaten, they tried to break the spirit behind it.

Again, WHY DO THEY NEED TO BEAT OUR MILITARY? It wasn't attacking them -- you even criticized it, implicitly, earlier by saying "if the Taliban was so evil, why didn't we go and root them out before 9/11".

Amazing how you willfuly choose to ignore or overlook any factor in the equation of US vs. Al Queda morality that might favor the USA.

It's the same reason we dropped a nuke on Hiroshima -- to say "look, if you don't give in, your people will die".

No, it's not the same reason. The nukes were dropped to say "look, we're not going to surrender unconditionally to your military, nor are we going to sacrifice another hundreds of thousands of American lives to defeat you conventionally, even though we believe it's sufficiently inevitable that you could see it if you were behaving rationally".

Since the Japanese behaved, as a warrior culture, less rationally vis-a-vis the morality of innocent life than the Germans, they ended up on the wrong end of two nukes.

Al Queda did not come under any serious attack on their civilian population from the USA before the 9/11 attacks, and even since then, the USA has not engaged in a campaign to murder innocent civilians as a means to change the behavior of Al Queda.

And the reasoning for that isn't entirely "moral", at least not necessarily so: the Japanese circa WWII were much more culturally supportive of the war effort, from what I understand, than have been the civilian populations infiltrated by Al Queda, on the whole.

To the extent civilian populations oust or quash Al Queda themselves before the US gets around to it, they'll be able to control their own destiny.

They obviously failed in their gambit because 1) it turns out our 'spirit' is more likely to turn vengeful than be broken

Not vengeful; willing to act to defend innocent life against international terrorism. There's a difference between vengeance and justice, you know.

and 2) they didn't do nearly enough damage to cause us to fold like Japan did.

But if they had the weaponry (nukes), they would have, and, IMO, that's possible down the road anyway. They don't have the moral fibre in their culture to say "whoah, that'd be overkill", because 9/11 itself was overkill.

Look, you are really acting either out of complete ignorance or stupidity, because Al Queda spokesmen (including bin Laden) have been quite clear about their desires: to kill Americans, to taste American blood, blah blah blah.

This isn't the rhetoric of the underlings in a war effort geared up to defend territory or a way of life; it's the rhetoric of a leadership that is committed to murdering innocent Americans (and other Westerners) anywhere, anytime, because they believe Allah wills it.

But you don't need to be an expert to see that the odds of having an effect are better than trying to match our military muscle.

Yet the history of what I'd call morally superior cultures suggests that they need not have "on-paper" military muscle that matches the enemy to win.

The USA did not match the British on paper during the Revolution, or during the War of 1812. Yet it won. Israel was sure-dead in the various campaigns conducted against it over the past various decades. Yet it won.

What history shows is two things: a nation-state, culture, people, whatever, that values human life, democracy, freedom of thought, and so on, will be able to defeat an enemy possessing greater numbers, land, and ammunition, if that enemy doesn't value those things nearly as much.

It also shows that a nation-state unwilling to use military might (including the inevitable collateral damage that goes with it) to defend itself will, very likely, go extinct.

Therefore, the fact that Al Queda is militarily inferior to the USA suggests that it is morally inferior as well, since it is willing to target innocent civilians to achieve political aims.

If it was morally equivalent to the USA, why wouldn't people like you help it out?

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

I was questioning the assertion that our campaign has anything to do with "saving lives" of those who suffer under the Taliban.

Could you please identify where that assertion was made? I must have missed it; I saw an assertion of saving lives generally (e.g. of US citizens), and plenty of morally idiotic assertions on your part, but I didn't see that.

Meanwhile, I don't even see the point of your question if you did raise it. What if our campaign had nothing to do with saving lives of Afghans living under the Taliban? Does that make us as morally repugnant as the 9/11 terrorists, as you seem to claim?

Maybe, just maybe, we're conducting a campaign that we're happy to see has a side effect of saving the lives of Afghans, rather than simply wiping them all out for our own convenience (the sad "turn Afghanistan into a lake" cartoon that went around the 'net shortly after 9/11).

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

Our goal is to stop terrorist attacks on our soil, and stop the resulting deaths and injuries, which we try to follow with minimal civilian deaths. Their goal regards killing civilians as a good thing, and doesn't care how many on their side die.

Well, yes, but "good thing" I think is misleading. That's the method they have chosen, and so executing that successfully is a "good thing". But from the view of just civilian deaths by themselves... No, I don't think it's viewed as a "good thing".

The main difference I think is that, unlike us, they don't feel the need to justify civilian deaths by calling it "collateral damage". Does not having to lie to yourself to feel comfortable with your actions indicate a greater level of "evil"? I guess that's arguable either way.

They made them count, but in a way that would piss off the rest of the world. Had they attacked an Air Force base, it would have been a sign that they weren't killing unrelated civilians. A show of strength (and everyone would have known what they could have hit), without the mass death.

A very good point. I absolutely agree. 100%. If I was an al queda leader (not bloody likely, for the same reason I'm not a Major General in the Army) I would have argued for that. Their choice is unforgiveable, and I want to make it clear again that I think that, even though I can see why they'd choose to.

And it was probably a tactical error, too, because of the backlash as you say.

But...

I also don't think we needed to bomb Nagisaka. Tricking the Japanese into thinking we had lots of bombs wasn't worth it. In fact, I don't think we needed to bomb Hiroshima, either. I think a demonstration, over water, would have been more than enough to make the point. Hell, use both, and give them the impression you have so many you can -waste- them in demonstrations.

But no one listened to me (what with being unborn by 30 years). Still, maybe that's part of the reason I can't label them as "evil" and us as "good".

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

Could you please identify where that assertion was made? I must have missed it; I saw an assertion of saving lives generally (e.g. of US citizens), and plenty of morally idiotic assertions on your part, but I didn't see that.

Look it up yourself. In the parent the the post where you quoted me, the poster was attempting to suggest that the harm done by the dead civilians was outweighed by the "estimated 100K" lives saved.

BTW, it's becoming increasingly obvious that "moraly idiotic" to you means "not asserting that the US is Good by Divine Right", and i'm starting to take pride in the moniker.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

Seems to me that waging a war to, e.g. in just one dimension, ensure the freedom of peoples (especially US citizen) to practice the religion they individually choose is morally superior to Al Queda's waging war (I'll call it that, since you try to equate their terrorism to our war) to impose their religion throughout the world.

Hah. How exactly is this war "ensuring the freedom of peoples"? The only threats to freedom I see are coming from John Ashcroft, the FBI, and the knee-jerk reactionism along with manipulative patriotism that lets them get away with it. You can argue that we're protecting -safety-, but freedom? It is to laugh. I bet you think Saddam was going to somehow steal your freedom, and that the Gulf War had nothing to do with oil.

WHAT ARE THEIR AIMS, in your words? What are the corresponding aims of the US government?

Ah, you see I thought we both knew that.

In the short term, al queda wants us the hell out of the middle east. To them, we are meddlers and imperialists with no right to be there. We control the local governments and then stand back and pretend we're not, as if they're too stupid to realize that we're doing it. I know this must be hard for you to grasp, but to them we are oppressors. Ceasing that oppression is their goal. Long term? Who is to say. "Destroy America" might go the way that "Destroy Communism" did in this country, were they to get their near-term goal.

Feel free to argue why they're wrong, but you will be wasting your breath because it's beside the point.

The U.S. goals? Harder to say, but expanding our hegemony seems to be chief among them.

But you consistently ignore one of my points, which is: the US has an imperfect military, therefore it is impossible for it to exist, especially be deployed in any useful fashion, without accidentally taking innocent human life.

That's true, I am ignoring it. If by "ignoring it" you mean "using it as one of the central cruxes of my argument, without which I wouldn't have a leg to stand on". I assume you are using that definition, because you're not too stupid to have realized how important this was. You obviously recall me saying that because civilian causualties are -inevitable-, and -unavoidable-, there is no way we could take military action without knowing in advance that civilian causualties -would- result. Then you remember me saying, when we take the action and civilians die, calling those deaths "accidents" or acting like they weren't -expected- is balderdash. We might not have -wanted- civilians die, but we -knew- they would.

You try to support their claim by presenting some kind of "cosmic fairness" argument: "Al Queda has a weaker military, therefore it is necessary for them to murder civilians".

What the hell? That's not even close. Cosmic fairness? Where did you even get the idea I'm talking about fairness? I'm talking about practicality. al Queda can't match our military, and thus engaging our military is removed from the list of practical actions.

just as someone would be a mathematical idiot if they equated two expressions that were clearly not identical by simply renaming two independent variables to the same name and then canceling them -- regardless of how much pseudo-intellectual hand-waving they engaged in to justify their results.


That's great! I love that analogy. So I guess I'm an idiot, because no matter how I try to make the equations look the same with some hand-waving -- let's call this process "algebra" -- you'll still insist they are different because the variables have different names.

Amazing how you willfuly choose to ignore or overlook any factor in the equation of US vs. Al Queda morality that might favor the USA.

You haven't -made- any except to assert as axiom that we're superior because we're a democracy. And I think I treat that with all the respect it deserves.

No, it's not the same reason. The nukes were dropped to say "look, we're not going to surrender unconditionally to your military, nor are we going to sacrifice another hundreds of thousands of American lives to defeat you conventionally, even though we believe it's sufficiently inevitable that you could see it if you were behaving rationally".

Um... No. We'd already said we weren't going to surrender. As for "sufficiently inevitable" - the Japanese believed that they were "morally superior" and thus would prevail against superior forces. Nothing you said was the actual message sent. The whole point wasn't to say we weren't going to sacrifice lives... It was to show what they would lose if they didn't surrender. "We won't surrender" isn't a way to make the enemy surrender.

When the emperor witnessed the power of the bomb, he saw my message, not yours. In fact, I've never seen it put the way you did before.

Anyway, I find it somewhat disturbing that you can justify to yourself wiping out 100,000 civilians for any reason.

Yet the history of what I'd call morally superior cultures suggests that they need not have "on-paper" military muscle that matches the enemy to win.

Oh, this should be interesting.

The USA did not match the British on paper during the Revolution, or during the War of 1812. Yet it won. Israel was sure-dead in the various campaigns conducted against it over the past various decades. Yet it won.

Haha! So, the reason we succeded in revolting was because we were "morally superior", not because most of Britain's army was already indisposed and they couldn't send reinforcements. You -do- know that Britain was already at war at the time, right? If that hadn't been the case, our little "colonial rebellion" would have been crushed.

What history shows is two things: a nation-state, culture, people, whatever, that values human life, democracy, freedom of thought, and so on, will be able to defeat an enemy possessing greater numbers, land, and ammunition, if that enemy doesn't value those things nearly as much.

Therefore, the fact that Al Queda is militarily inferior to the USA suggests that it is morally inferior as well, since it is willing to target innocent civilians to achieve political aims.

OMFG! If history shows you that, I want whatever you're smoking cus it's good shit! Though evidently kills braincells. I guess the Chinese were able to stave off the Mongols because of their deep and abiding love of democracy, then? I mean, your lack of understanding of the point of the nukes should have hinted... but are you really such an idiot?

So let me ask you -- what was it about us that made us morally superior to the Native Americans and let us win? Was it slavery? That we were invaders on what was rightfully their land? The fact that we were happy to wipe them out man, woman, child, to take that land? Or does democracy trump all other virtues? Haha!

This is wonderful. I've heard of "might makes right" as a brutaly pragmatic philosophy... But never have I heard "right makes might"! That's hi-fucking-larious. Apparently when you heard that history was written by the victors, you thought this was just and good... Because if their version of history wasn't right, then why did they win?

So, let me get this straight (I'm having trouble grasping how insane you are)... By you're "right makes might" theory, or alternatively "God loves the one left standing": Nazi Germany was morally superior to Poland, France, and northern Africa, but only barely better than Britain, until they were saved by the ultimate righteousness (us, of course). And apparently death camps didn't put Germany below Italy's level, since Italy was the first Axis power to fall. And I guess the Jews were morally bankrupt because they were so easily subjugated, until we gave them Israel and they suddenly became saints that could fight off multiple nations at once using their mighty Freedom Cannon (powered by Democracy)!

Oh, man, that's insane. But it makes sense of some things. I guess it means that the Hutus were morally superior to the Tutsis (beacuse they loved democracy!), and the reason we didn't intervene is because we knew that. Well, that's one less thing to blame our government for! Turns out they were just doing God's work!

So if that's true, I guess that means we should stop talking, because apparently North Vietnam is morally superior to us -- vastly so, cus they really kicked our ass! So find a Vietnemese person and ask them what they think, and I'll believe them, because I don't want to get my ass kicked for being morally inferior!

But in all seriousness... At this point I'm actually pissed that you had the gall to call me a moral idiot. I've had this discussion before with smart people who disagreed with me, and they could bring up good points. But you... You have the moral sense of a six-year-old schoolyard bully... You probably -were- one, and never grew out of it. Too bad those you terrorized weren't 'righteous' enough to teach you a lesson. Well, stay in your sandbox little boy, and let people with fully developed minds debate about things in the real world, where life is more complicated than "I can beat you up, so I'm right".

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

Could you please identify where that assertion was made? I must have missed it; I saw an assertion of saving lives generally (e.g. of US citizens), and plenty of morally idiotic assertions on your part, but I didn't see that.

Look it up yourself. In the parent the the post where you quoted me, the poster was attempting to suggest that the harm done by the dead civilians was outweighed by the "estimated 100K" lives saved.

Hmm, I didn't read that as meaning "estimated 100K lives of those living under Taliban rule saved", which is what I thought you claimed had been said.

BTW, it's becoming increasingly obvious that "moraly idiotic" to you means "not asserting that the US is Good by Divine Right", and i'm starting to take pride in the moniker.

No, that's not what it means to me at all.

For instance, the USA (in the form of its President) willfully murdered innocent African Muslims in a cruise-missile attack on a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan. I believe there was no moral justification for an attack so sudden that it couldn't be preceded by just the sort of on-the-ground verification that it wasn't a chem-weapons plant, and that there was probably no practical justification (based on threat assessment) either.

So, I conclude that it was highly likely the attack was made at that time not because of an actual perceived threat to the USA's safety but rather to the President's personal power -- it was timed to coincide with, and thus draw attention away from, certain grand-jury testimony scheduled to be given involving some stuff the President had lied about to the American people earlier that year.

Further, Americans had plenty of opportunity to discover the lie, figure out the timing, and yet chose to not remove that President from office, despite the fact that the whole point of having "offices" in that sense of the word is to ensure that people place their duty to them above their own personal desires. (I.e. we elect someone President not because they will go to war to save their own butts, but because they won't, and much of what goes into laws about how and when people are forcibly removed from office is the importance of the detection and prevention of selfish behavior on the part of officeholders.)

I said then, and believe it's been reasonably borne out by events since, that we would pay a very steep price for our amoral, as well as immoral, behavior in that whole episode ("we" being the USA) -- willingly letting a criminal off the hook because we didn't want to "shake up our economy", while allowing that criminal and his cohorts to trash the reputations of people like Ken Starr, making them out to be the source of all the evil, when they were, largely, just doing the job they were appointed to do (though perhaps sometimes overzealously).

So, no, I don't buy the Divine Right argument.

Neither do I buy your argument that the USA is as evil as any terrorist organization out there.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

Seems to me that waging a war to, e.g. in just one dimension, ensure the freedom of peoples (especially US citizen) to practice the religion they individually choose is morally superior to Al Queda's waging war (I'll call it that, since you try to equate their terrorism to our war) to impose their religion throughout the world.

Hah. How exactly is this war "ensuring the freedom of peoples"?

Uhhhhh, hmmm, okay, so you can't see that killing people who are committed to killing anyone who doesn't willingly live under an incredibly narrow interpretation of Islam is a means to ensure the freedom of people who would rather not live under that interpretation?

The only threats to freedom I see are coming from John Ashcroft, the FBI, and the knee-jerk reactionism along with manipulative patriotism that lets them get away with it.

So you're convinced that Ashcroft is the reason 2,000+ people were killed on 9/11?

I'll be interested in hearing how relatives of the victims of that day's events react to your telling them that Al Queda, bin Laden, extremist Islam, etc., pose no threat to the US whatsoever.

You can argue that we're protecting -safety-, but freedom? It is to laugh. I bet you think Saddam was going to somehow steal your freedom, and that the Gulf War had nothing to do with oil.

More to the point, I'd say that oil is presently a critical component in the defense of my freedom.

Without oil at prices reasonably reflecting the market (I'm not arguing it's at that level, just vastly closer to it thanks to Operation Desert Storm), the US economy is able to continue pumping along quite smoothly.

So, not only does our military find itself more easily able to afford to continue training, even going into action to defend our interests (not that every military action truly does, but that's not my point here), our economic success, contrasted to that of nations that are even more restrictive of their citizen's freedoms, offers useful evidence of the dangers of going down the route of socialism, which is, in my book, anti-freedom.

Since I'd like to be free to choose how and when I work, and for what fee, and leave it to the market, rather than the heavy hand of government, to decide whether to take me up on my choice or leave me unemployed, I consider the preservation of the free operation of the market to be an important component in the practicalities needed to preserve my freedom.

And note the symmetry -- the following of the Golden Rule -- of my concern here: I wish Saddam Hussein the same freedom to choose for himself the price at which he'll buy (or, in his specific case, sell) oil, because I believe everyone else's freedom to participate in this market is as important as my own.

That's why I don't consider "it was just about oil" to be an emotional hot-button when it comes to Desert Storm. Am I justifying that operation on moral grounds per se? No, though I don't exactly reject it morally either (beyond the simple "it's a use of force rather than a turning of the cheek" moral reasoning of Christ Jesus, which I try to follow but cannot say I do fully).

So, what I am saying is that, relative to certain other acts of aggression, the USA, often enough, acts to preserve important, practical, freedoms for all people, beyond just US citizens, certainly beyond just preserving the iron hand of governmental control.

(It's possible Bush41 was considering only that last aspect when he initially was of the mind that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait wasn't worth bothering about -- that was before Margaret Thatcher "set him straight", as I recall.)

WHAT ARE THEIR AIMS, in your words? What are the corresponding aims of the US government?

Ah, you see I thought we both knew that.

In the short term, al queda wants us the hell out of the middle east. To them, we are meddlers and imperialists with no right to be there. We control the local governments and then stand back and pretend we're not, as if they're too stupid to realize that we're doing it. I know this must be hard for you to grasp, but to them we are oppressors. Ceasing that oppression is their goal. Long term? Who is to say.

Oh, they make that quite clear.

And, for a nation that "controls local governments", we sure manage to control them to do lots of things not in our own short-term interest, don't we? Hmm.

"Destroy America" might go the way that "Destroy Communism" did in this country, were they to get their near-term goal.

Frankly, that is my hope as well -- that, if we did stop "meddling" in their affairs, they'd get tired of bashing us and move on to live their lives.

I see too much evidence to the contrary. For one thing, there's plenty of reason to believe that if we removed ourselves wholesale from the region, it would end up a nuclear wasteland pretty quickly (Israel would perhaps not simply allow itself to be forced into the Mediterranean without an endgame-style fight). In my experience, people blame America not just for America's meddling, but for America's failure to meddle.

For another, it's clear that the USA gets little or no "cred" from Islam for its efforts on the part of Muslims to defend themselves from external attack, just as it gets no cred from you when it comes to things like that.

So, we can't participate in their markets (that's part of what you call "meddling" in their books, though you may well dispute whether it is meddling -- see, too many of their children buy our blue jeans, listen to our music, etc., and it's our fault, at least party, for offering it in their markets), we can't risk our own lives helping them out, we can't even meddle in the affairs of their enemies even to stay the hand of said enemies (we get no cred for keeping Israel from going even further, when it could have, in seizing and holding land, killing Arafat in the '80s, etc.).

The upshot is: complete and utter withdrawal from all Islamic territories.

And since many such territories have a proven record of being a breeding-ground for those committed to mass murder of Americans, we simply sit back and hope that doesn't happen.

Since that won't happen -- Americans would not choose to simply curl up and die, which is the upshot of your recommendation as I see it -- it's reasonable to expect all Islamic territories to be nuked in the near future, since we can't go in and meddle, yet must prevent them massacring us by the hundreds of thousands, millions, etc., which enough of them fully intend to do.

If you disagree, perhaps you could explain just what you do expect the US to do to protect itself against what is already a demonstrated threat as far as most Americans are concerned (i.e. no point saying Iraq wouldn't have ever had nukes even without Desert Shield/Storm; most Americans believe the risk was high enough, so go with what would be likely based on what Americans believe and how they act).

Feel free to argue why they're wrong, but you will be wasting your breath because it's beside the point.

Agreed.

The U.S. goals? Harder to say, but expanding our hegemony seems to be chief among them.

Hmm, seeing as the US is the world's sole superpower and has now demonstrated that we are easily capable of quite literally ruling the world by merely threatening any combination of nuke attack, large-scale conventional warfare, all the way down to pinprick, special-ops-type stuff, limited only by our own tendency to keep our military budget comparatively small, I'd say expansionism is extremely low on our list of things to do -- especially compared to historical superpowers.

But you consistently ignore one of my points, which is: the US has an imperfect military, therefore it is impossible for it to exist, especially be deployed in any useful fashion, without accidentally taking innocent human life.

That's true, I am ignoring it. If by "ignoring it" you mean "using it as one of the central cruxes of my argument, without which I wouldn't have a leg to stand on". I assume you are using that definition, because you're not too stupid to have realized how important this was. You obviously recall me saying that because civilian causualties are -inevitable-, and -unavoidable-, there is no way we could take military action without knowing in advance that civilian causualties -would- result. Then you remember me saying, when we take the action and civilians die, calling those deaths "accidents" or acting like they weren't -expected- is balderdash. We might not have -wanted- civilians die, but we -knew- they would.

Okay, you're right, you weren't ignoring it.

So you are, indeed, arguing that it is exactly as immoral to defend oneself against attack as it is to be an Al-Queda-style terrorist, simply because the former has a risk of killing innocents, just as the latter has, as its tactical goal the killing of innocents?

Well, that's what I thought you might be saying at one point yesterday, but decided you couldn't possibly mean that, and that you must instead think we're immoral because we aren't conducting this war more perfectly.

So, in your view, self-defense itself is immoral, because of the risks to innocents?

You try to support their claim by presenting some kind of "cosmic fairness" argument: "Al Queda has a weaker military, therefore it is necessary for them to murder civilians".

What the hell? That's not even close. Cosmic fairness? Where did you even get the idea I'm talking about fairness? I'm talking about practicality. al Queda can't match our military, and thus engaging our military is removed from the list of practical actions.

Well, under similar circumstances, the US, and Western nations in particular, have shown a tendency to simply give up, i.e. surrender. Why couldn't al Queda simply say "hey, we're outmatched, and what we're doing isn't important enough to engage in a likely-fruitless campaign to murder innocent people"?

I mean, if I take myself as an example, I could say that I'm pretty powerless. So does that mean I can go around killing innocent people to get attention for whatever cause I consider just?

Put another way: do you believe Timothy McVeigh was morally equivalent to Al Queda and the US government?

And, by extension, do you believe advocates of gun control are morally equivalent to Timothy McVeigh?

After all, McVeigh had basically no power -- certainly less than al Queda -- and he murdered fewer innocents than they (presumably) did on 9/11.

Further, he did it (if we can believe the evil US government ;-) to call attention to the lack of constitutional and political safeguards surrounding the Waco debacle. I.e. not only did laws he considered trumped by the 2nd amendment get passed and brutally enforced, the woman who ordered the tanks in, precipitating (if not directly causing) the obliteration of an obscure right-wing Christian sect was allowed to remain in office, relatively unscathed by presiding over such a severe act.

Further, since things like the Waco debacle are clearly risks that anyone takes when they pass laws -- which are enforced by imperfect (albeit generally well-intentioned) law-enforcement agencies and agents (like Janet Reno) -- then those who push to pass gun-control laws, who do (clearly) have the power to affect others, are just as immoral as McVeigh.

Correct by your reasoning, or no?

just as someone would be a mathematical idiot if they equated two expressions that were clearly not identical by simply renaming two independent variables to the same name and then canceling them -- regardless of how much pseudo-intellectual hand-waving they engaged in to justify their results.

That's great! I love that analogy. So I guess I'm an idiot, because no matter how I try to make the equations look the same with some hand-waving -- let's call this process "algebra" -- you'll still insist they are different because the variables have different names.

Well, your earlier posts seemed to be saying that because al Queda had to use willful mass-murder of innocents to achieve its goals, while the USA need use only direct attacks on military combatants with inevitable, and intentionally small numbers of, collateral damage to achieve its goals, the two sides are morally equivalent.

That's an equation, right? I mean, arguing for equivalency amounts to an equation?

Now, it seems reasonable that accidentally killing someone isn't as morally repugnant as willfully doing so, and that the US killing innocents in the "War On Terror" is somewhere between those two extremes (closer to the former in any specific instance, closer to the latter overall), while al Queda is full-tilt on the latter extreme (they consider failure to murder innocents equivalent to failure regarding their mission).

Therefore, one must conclude that, to achieve "equivalence", you've either canceled out the "goals" entirely, as if al Queda's and the USA's are morally equivalent (which you appear to argue elsewhere), or that you see al Queda's goals as morally superior to the USA's goals.

If that's the case, you haven't done a good job making it.

For example, the USA's goals do not include preventing Arab Muslims from "meddling" in its affairs to anywhere near the same extent as vice versa.

I.e. the US has no problem with them moving here, living here, participating in our sorta-free markets here, voting here, running for office here, recruiting people to Islam here, preaching in mosques here, and so on.

I mean, sure, we're in the process of negotiating just how permissive we'll be on many of these fronts: is preaching mass murder of Americans in mosques going to still be allowed, for example? (That's been going on in Britain, at least, and they're reconsidering their permissiveness as well.)

But, on the whole, the US is much more willing to allow Muslims to live freely here than vice versa.

In my book, that's exactly the sort of thing that makes the USA's goals morally superior to those of al Queda (and many other Muslim organizations) -- we practice the Golden Rule to a greater practical extent.

Amazing how you willfuly choose to ignore or overlook any factor in the equation of US vs. Al Queda morality that might favor the USA.

You haven't -made- any except to assert as axiom that we're superior because we're a democracy.

Hey, it was you who presented the equation, and chose to focus on what you did. It wasn't my job to fix your equation. I entered the discussion only because I found the equation to be morally idiotic, and asked for an explanation -- which you apparently have tried to give, but I fail to see how you can justify it still, and you appear to be resorting to dredging up all sorts of stuff that wasn't present in your original equation.

As far as I can see, your equation really is: "since the USA has a history of being really evil, it doesn't matter what anyone else does to it -- they'll be no less moral than the USA".

Is that correct, or not? It certainly is consistent with what lots of elites (including Bill Clinton) have said about our "culpability" since 9/11.

The whole point wasn't to say we weren't going to sacrifice lives... It was to show what they would lose if they didn't surrender. "We won't surrender" isn't a way to make the enemy surrender.

I presented that aspect only to illustrate that it was a choice we could have made. A moral person, faced with possibly accidentally killing innocents in defending himself, must consider surrendering. On the other hand, many people consider a strong person surrendering to a bully to be immoral, because it allows the bully to continue, even expand, his behavior. In that sense, the strong person cannot win on moral grounds (and that's true of the USA today, and throughout the 20th century): he's wrong if he defends himself and/or his friends, because he's "projecting his strength", and he's wrong if he surrenders, because he's "failing to act".

Anyway, I find it somewhat disturbing that you can justify to yourself wiping out 100,000 civilians for any reason.

I didn't justify it at all. I pointed out that it could be seen as somewhat preferable to killing even more American citizens in further conventional warfare, and even to surrendering, since the US represented, compared to WWII Japan, a somewhat less aggressive nation. And, by winning that war (against Japan and Germany), the world became a bit more moral because the surviving power was more interested in practical peace than waging war, even if just by a few degrees.

And that, to me, is the whole mystery of morality: at the extreme, it's easy to argue that any killing is simply wrong, therefore all killing is equally wrong. Which appears to be an element of your logic.

But, in practice, morality on earth is practiced by people, who are the only visible representatives of morality, and, on the whole, that means that if, say, 100 serial killers are killed in an act that prevents 100 innocent people from being killed, the world enjoys a corresponding degree of extra morality, on the whole.

Most people instinctively recognize this. That's why, e.g., they tend to mourn the death of a minister, priest, preacher, etc., even of another faith, moreso than that of a prostitute, drug dealer, or homeless person. Not that they necessarily value the life of the latter type of person less (though in many cases some probably do), but because they value the positive moral impulse given to society by the former, who had already decided to live their lives in that manner (something the prostitute, dealer, or homeless person might have gotten around to had they lived).

Yet the history of what I'd call morally superior cultures suggests that they need not have "on-paper" military muscle that matches the enemy to win.

Oh, this should be interesting.

Turns out, it was not, because you misinterpreted what I was getting at.

I was not saying "right makes might", nor "might makes right", though the former is a bit closer to what I mean.

When I say "morally superior", I mean that, in this discussion, in strict contrast to your argument for moral equivalence -- nothing more.

Nothing I said implied that nation X winning a victory over nation Y meant it was morally superior.

What I was getting at was, why is it that al Queda, which believes Allah is on its side, can't call on Allah to do the battles for it -- especially, kill the innocents, only as He sees fit, while preserving the victory?

History shows plenty of examples of "moral" cultures where this is precisely what has been done. (Whether these examples are all historically accurate is another issue -- that's what history, e.g. the Bible, teaches its adherents -- "the battle is God's", that sort of thing.)

Western cultures generally, since early in the 20th century especially, have come to believe that their morality allows, or possibly enables, them to win victories against great enemies without willfully killing civilians.

That belief is not uniform across these cultures, of course, but it better represents how the nations governed by these cultures behave in wartime compared to nations governed by other cultures, which don't (yet) hold to that belief.

And, history suggests that belief is not entirely without merit; after all, the nations that best represent that belief are largely free to direct their own way in the world, compared to those who are less so-representative.

So let me ask you -- what was it about us that made us morally superior to the Native Americans and let us win?

I didn't claim that we did win because of moral superiority. Though there certainly were elements of that that helped -- for example, we allow individual ownership of land, which gave individuals plenty of incentive to defend, as well as cultivate for maximum benefit to fellow peoples, that land -- something the previous inhabitants (not "natives" exactly, since it's likely the case their ancestors invaded and basically wiped out the indigenous Americans) did not have a great track record on.

Whether individual land ownership is a moral thing, I'm not sure, frankly, but it's probably a little bit more moral than a collective, run by an elite, owning the land on which, basically, serfs live and have to work as directed by that elite.

(I use "we" in the cultural sense here; it's entirely possible I'm part "native", though it seems the region of my ancestry from which that information comes is prone to those sorts of claims, even when they're not at all supported by the evidence. Previously, I'd assumed that the racism of European Americans was too uniform to allow the possibility of any to make up stories of being partly descended from "Indians", which was a somewhat simplistic assumption, I admit.)

Never have I heard "right makes might"!

So, you don't believe Moses, Elijah, Jesus, Paul, Gandhi, MLKJr, etc., achieved their great works due to any moral superiority over their peers?

In other words, you believe they could have just as easily lived their lives raping, killing, pillaging, stealing, lying, cheating, and so on, and still parted the Red Sea, ascended to Heaven, raised the dead, sent the British packing, and so on?

Do you therefore believe they "just happened" to be the ones who did these works, so we needlessly celebrate their characters when they were merely the lucky recipients of fate?

But in all seriousness... At this point I'm actually pissed that you had the gall to call me a moral idiot. I've had this discussion before with smart people who disagreed with me, and they could bring up good points. But you... You have the moral sense of a six-year-old schoolyard bully... You probably -were- one, and never grew out of it. Too bad those you terrorized weren't 'righteous' enough to teach you a lesson. Well, stay in your sandbox little boy, and let people with fully developed minds debate about things in the real world, where life is more complicated than "I can bea you up, so I'm right".

I'd let this stand as a testament to your willingness and ability to comprehend simple English (since what I wrote couldn't possibly be intelligently interpreted the way you take it), but, since you appear to be interested...

...actually, I was the sort of kid who was sometimes picked on by bullies, and sometimes stood up against them, for himself, and sometimes for a friend. I have a pretty-vivid memory of putting myself in between a friend, who was the oft-picked-on boy in school, and pretty much the whole rest of the class at recess, swinging my jacket at them to make sure they knew that if they tried to approach him and do whatever it is they were doing (which I can't recall), they'd get the business end of the jacket's zipper. (Sounds pretty trivial, I know, but for a 4th-grader, that was a pretty scary moment.)

And those are moments I'm proud of, compared to moments of cowardice, when I avoided helping a friend, or gave in to being bullied.

What I've learned through life is that the problem with the world is not that there are too many evil people, because there are not actually that many willing to act on it, or that there are too few good people willing to act on their goodness.

The problem is, there are too many people "in the middle" who'll constantly find excuses to not act, to not make practical choices between good and evil. They'll advocate "peace" only when it doesn't involve a commitment on their own part to the success of the peace process ("commitment" meaning: they and their families die if it fails). When somebody like me stands up for what's right, they won't stand with me, waiting to see "what happens", though they might come to me later in private and say "thanks for standing up", to which all I can say is, "gee, thanks", and wonder why they didn't have the guts, the spine, the courage, etc. to stand with me when it counted.

And there are people like you, or are motivated by people like you, who say "the US is the moral equivalent of Al Queda" and thus discourage the middle-grounders from fighting on behalf of what is clearly the morally superior, though clearly not the morally perfect, entity.

So, in my experience, you are the sort of person who, upon observing the schoolyard bully Howard beating the crap out of little Jimmy, constantly explains to everyone that Jimmy should have done Howard's homework like he asked; that Jimmy's parents make more money than Howard's; that Howard doesn't get as much attention from the teachers as Jimmy; therefore that Howard can't be expected to do anything else, and so it's Jimmy's own fault he's getting the crap kicked out of him.

As a result, too many observers are convinced, by your rhetoric, to not intervene to prevent Jimmy from being pummelled, possibly killed, or probably turning into a bully himself down the road, and that sometimes bullying is just to be expected, not stood up against, since nobody who would stand up against it is himself perfect.

That's moral idiocy in action.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

Thankfully, most rational people recognize that the goals of the respective organizations are exactly what make one more moral and ethical than the other.

Yes. I think that falls under the heading intent, which I made several lengthy posts about. I say under, because goals are a function of intent. Or, as I'm using the terms, intent could be considered "disposition" of a sort, a more far-reaching aspect than a "goal", used in the sense of something more short-term.

Huh, then I've probably misunderstood what you were writing somehow. So you meant to morally equate, or perhaps even weight in al Queda's favor, the short-term strategic goals of the corresponding war efforts, rather than indict the US generally as being morally equivalent to al Queda?

Here, try this example out, so you don't get so confused by your anti-American hate.

If you truly think I'm motivated by anti-American hate, either you are dumb or I've managed to grossly misrepresent myself. Don't be offended, I actually think it is the latter. I can't blame you for jumping to that conclusion since I have the rather non-mainstream opinion that we aren't the best people on earth.

Assuming by "best people" you mean something consistent with what you were talking about when morally equating the US with al Queda...

...then I don't see how that's particularly non-mainstream. From our public school system to our mass media, the education is constantly that we, the USA, are the primary, if not sole, reason for so much misery in the world, from oppressed poor, oppressed minorities, and oppressed nations to the ozone hole, global warming, and the fact that the sun itself will burn itself out in a few billion years.

But that's not hate... That's called "reality". I actually like this country a lot.

I'll take it on faith, but it's extremely difficult to discern that based on your other posts -- though, to be fair, that seems to be primarily the result of your assuming my concerns over your moral-equivalence equation was based entirely on the belief that the US had done, and could do, no moral wrong.

[Snipped a long analogy which is a stinging indictment of my backwards thinking and broken reasoning... or at least it would be if it was analogous to reality]

But it wasn't intended to be analogous to reality -- it was a scientific attempt to find an emotionally neutral means to figure out your moral equation.

I was specifically not trying to make it particularly analogous to the present situation, except to the degree necessary to highlight your equation.

(For example, Marsha indeed kills innocent children, despite being, analogously, the USA. I'd hardly do that if I was trying to be faithful to a "reality" I was promoting in which the US could do no wrong.)

First, a little backstory.

First, how about you answer the question based solely on the analogy, assuming a morally neutral backstory, without having to "decorate" in ways you didn't bother to mention in your posts morally equating the US with al Queda?

Billy learned how to kill and rape because he was trained how by Marsha herself.

In reality, Billy, like most boys, learn how to kill and rape because that's pretty much human nature when not limited by societal pressures, such as civilization. Marsha didn't teach him that -- she taught him how to better protect himself against external aggression, even those with overwhelming superiority, by using the sort of tactics he later employed to avoid being caught by her when she finally decided he was too dangerous to continue to live.

Billy was being beaten up by Tina, a woman Marsha hated, and she gave Billy the training for free because of this.

And many of Tina's friends constitute those who later promote resentment of Marsha, always dredging up history of anything Marsha has done wrong, as if Marsha is incapable of (or not worthy of being morally judged in light of) learning from her mistakes and becoming a better person -- something Marsha herself has tended to allow for in others, including Billy.

Second, Marsha herself was hardly a saint. She'd committed murder and rape herself on a number of occasions.

Yes, back in her wild teen years, when pretty much everyone else was doing the same thing, and when she, like Billy vis-a-vis Tina, was under direct assault by superior forces.

She's since learned the error of her ways, though occasionally flashes of her temper and even misbehavior can be discerned -- something her enemies, mostly Tina's supporters, constantly call attention to. (I think Marsha is probably a lot like Xena on that syndicated show, or Angel on the show of that name, in this sense: it's not always crystal-clear that she's going to be morally perfect in any instance, but she's clearly fighting more on the side of "what's right" than Tina earlier, Billy later.)

The townsfolk knew, but they don't like to talk about it, and pretend it never happened, or that she "had a good reason".

Also, they're too dependent on her to defend them against the Tinas and Billys of the world, partly because Marsha sometimes tended to keep them disarmed (the "superhero syndrome", I call it), mostly because they're too prone to believe Tina's cadre of naysayers, who look forward to the day Tina can return to power and enslave anyone, murdering those who resist (e.g. intellectuals, Jews, priests, anyone who can read a book...).

She treated them nice, and they just couldn't admit they'd been taken in.

Well, what choice did they have, as long as she generally behaved herself well? How are they being "taken in", when they a) refuse to take up her cause of fighting against evil-doers like Tina and, later, Billy and b) aren't willing to endure the result of eliminating Marsha, their only practical protector?

Seems to me they're doing what's practical under the (cowardly) circumstances they find themselves in.

For myself, I'm prepared to take out a leader only when I'm prepared to lead myself, or prepared to accept the leadership of whoever takes over.

Perhaps that's how the townsfolk reason among themselves.

Plus, since she was the biggest and meanest, there was a sense of safety in having her around.

Well, that's only if by "meanest" you mean "meanest in a fight", since, if she's not fighting evil -- whatever the townsfolk find unacceptable -- they would have no sense of safety.

But they never liked Billy to begin with. His crimes they didn't have to ignore.

Indeed, since Billy offers little in the way of protection of their way of life to the townspeople, they find little reason to tolerate him.

But since they're too cowardly to fight him, partly because Tina's supporters keep reminding them that Billy can't really be that bad, since it's Marsha who represents his "opposite", and she's no saint, they don't really do much to stand against him.

Which leaves the problem to fester, until it draws Marsha's attention, as per my original story.

If the townsfolk had stood firm against Billy, being willing to make the kind of personal sacrifices Marsha had made before and would make again, Billy might have learned much earlier that he could not expect to get away with his acts, and maybe even "converted" to the right way, as Marsha had years ago.

But they concerned themselves primarily with living their own lives, thinking Billy was a sleeping dog they could just let lie.

Third, the reason Billy isn't getting what he wants out of life is because what he wants in life is for Marsha to leave his house.

No, what he wants in life is for Marsha to leave his town -- his entire world -- and he uses as an excuse some strange notion that he has preexisting rights to her house as a pretext to gain popular support for his long-term goal. (Specifically, once he destabilizes Marsha by getting the townsfolk to assail her for "occupying" his house, it'll be easier to dispense with her entirely. The townsfolk might not go along with that, but they'll be unwilling, or unable, to stop him.)

She'd already taken the porch facing the lake and given it to one of her homeless chums, without asking anyone else if they minded.

Actually, the townsfolk themselves did that, via their "United Townsfolk" organization, thinking that the solution to homelessness was to take other people's property and give it to the homeless.

And, sure, Billy had long tried to kill that homeless chum -- call him "Jacob" -- of Marsha's, and constantly preached the idea that his death was God's will, so it's not unreasonable that some community effort be made to ensure that the poor guy had some place to call home, a place where Jacob could defend himself from the likes of Billy, as well as Tina and her friends, all of whom resent Jacob, because he doesn't agree with Tina's approach to running things -- he's much more supportive of Marsha's stated approach, and he's pretty persuasive for a homeless guy, having become a sort of mascot for the downtrodden. (He's never had a problem making a living -- he keeps getting kicked out of his own house by people making him a scapegoat for their own problems.)

But taking part of Billy's house and giving it to someone Billy hated was probably not the brightest move, even though it was what Jacob said he wanted more than anyplace else in town, because of the sentimental value it held (his ancestors lived there, some of them driven away by aggressors, though originally they took it by force themselves once or twice).

What some people can't help noticing, though, is how the Jacob's part of Billy's home is the best-maintained, best-looking, most orderly, and so on. People who want to visit Billy's home usually prefer to stay in Jacob's area, though they visit Billy's too.

However, Billy, resentful of Jacob's evident success at organizing and cleaning his little area of the house, instead of just doing better himself, takes to attacking Jacob in his area -- just as so many have attacked Jacob in his home in the past -- and even attacks people who just visit Jacob!

Sadly, the townsfolk, still caught up in the "moral dilemma" of having to choose between Marsha and Tina, Marsha and Billy, and so on, end up thinking that it's not worth defending Jacob.

After all, just as some of them resent Marsha's standing up to Tina and even Billy, they're easily made to resent Jacob's standing up to Billy -- refusing to be driven from the home, defending himself against Billy's attacks, even occasionally going outside his own little area of the house to destroy weapons Billy continually tries to build to eliminate Jacob.

Why Billy can't just learn to get along with less-than-ideal circumstances like Jacob has learned to do over the years, some people wonder, but they figure "peace" is worth achieving, even if it means coming at the cost of Billy killing Jacob, Jacob no longer being around to support Marsha's ideas that townsfolk be generally able to live as they choose, and, ultimately, people like Tina and Billy running everything.

And she made it clear she wasn't going anywhere

Well, where could she go, but six feet under? Her enemies -- mostly Tina and her supporters -- had long been committed to killing her outright. Having failed to do so, they'd since undertaken a campaign to subvert whatever moral authority she seemed to have among the townsfolk, who weren't able to see that they were sewing the seeds of their own destruction by going along with the thesis that Marsha should be allowed to be destroyed because, in her vigorous defense of large-scale issues of freedom, she failed to be 100% perfectly morally correct by each townsperson's judgement.

And what's so sad is that each person has a different idea of what Marsha has done wrong. Because she's so "visible", due to being so strong, they all talk about her constantly, and few can agree on exactly what Marsha should have done to stop something really bad from happening in any instance.

But they're so convinced they're right about her being wrong, they overlook the fact that anyone acting successfully as Marsha had would also have lots of naysayers.

That is, after all, the penalty for acting to help others -- "no good deed goes unpunished", is what Marsha has learned.

When the fighting started, some were rather worried about the lengths Marsha would go to. They realized what Billy did was bad and he needed to be stopped, but they also realized that, really, Marsha was in a problem of her own creation (and they were paying the price for). And in the end she didn't give a shit about anyone who got caught in the crossfire.

Sure, they were "worried" -- but not enough to actually take care of the problem, Billy, so Marsha wouldn't have to.

That's the inevitable result of allowing evil to fester and spread in your local. At some point, someone else has to step in and fix it for you, and you have to accept whatever means they use to do it.

Blaming Marsha for how she solves the problem they allowed to fester is like Billy blaming Jacob for the poor condition of his house compared to the portion given for Jacob to live in -- they're merely shifting the blame to someone who acts, to draw attention away from the fact that they refused to act when given many opportunities to do so earlier, when dealing with the problem would have been much, much easier.

She'd do what it took to keep the townsfolk from turning on her, sure -- which wasn't much, since they didn't want to. If she didn't force their hand, she was safe.

Yup, just as they were cowards in the face of tyrants like Tina and Billy, they'd have to accept pretty much whatever Marsha decided to do to set things right.

And, after Billy's dead, while some of them will thank Marsha, Tina's supporters will make sure that the story widely told is of Marsha going off half-cocked and killing innocent children, as if Billy, and especially the cowardly townsfolk, had nothing to do with it.

They realized that Marsha didn't really take any risks at all.

They didn't "realize" that, they chose to believe that, ignoring, as you did, the fact that Marsha had already lost her family and some of her friends to Billy, thanks to the inaction of the townsfolk, and their constantly discouraging Marsha from doing anything substantial to curb Billy's ever-growing appetite for violence in the past.

She was huge, strong, and the only skills Billy had to fight her were ones Marsha had given him.

That and all the apologists for Tina and Billy who helped make it a war between Billy and Marsha, rather than Billy and a law-abiding, rights-defending townsfolk.

And they remember how "open" the dialogue was. There was only one thing you could say to not be branded as a "Billy-lover" or "Marsha-hater".

That's another of the pro-Tina sort of "half-lie" that's so widely told.

After all, we're to believe it's so bad to be "branded" something, which really means "someone said something I didn't like" (as in Chris Burke branding me as a "bully", an "idiot", and so on in another post).

But, somehow, that's "just as bad" as the things Tina and Billy have done, ranging from theft, lying, cheating, raping, to mass murder.

Meanwhile, while Marsha indeed did have "open" dialogs, Tina and Billy never allowed anyone any real opportunity to guide how they did things.

If the townsfolk wanted Marsha to not do something about Billy, she listened to them and, probably too often, heeded their advice. If Marsha thought somebody should give some of their money to the poor, and they disagreed, Marsha wouldn't do anything to force the issue.

Billy and Tina, of course, operated quite differently. Billy would just steal the money, or injure or kill someone he didn't like. Tina would steal the money, give it to the poor, and call it "compassion"; or systematically imprison, torture, and kill people who disagreed with her and call it "reeducation".

Sadly, too many townsfolk couldn't make such crucial moral distinctions between Tina and Marsha, so, to them, they were merely offering two morally equivalent choices regarding how to live. That's somewhat understandable, since, in the end, they could both be said to "rule by force", when given the opportunity.

The others didn't care about history. Their friends had died, and that was all that mattered. Perspective was an enemy, since it damaged resolve.

Yet perspective also served as the only defense against the kind of moral equivalencing done by Tina and her supporters to discourage Marsha, and anyone else who would truly stand up against Billy, from taking action.

Tina, in failing to take over the town earlier, secretly wanted the whole town to fall under the criminal governance of Billy, because that would set the stage for the townsfolk to finally welcome Tina's Ultimate Solution -- the "utopia" of her governance -- and hand all their freedoms over to her.

After all, Tina knew just which townsfolk should be doctors, which should be lawyers, which should be farmers, which should drive cars, which should ride bikes, which should walk, and so on, so she had a vision of order, which included everyone helping everyone else, either voluntarily or because Tina and her supporters forced them to.

And then, the prologue.

Marsha didn't kill everyone, of course.

No, of course not, just a couple of kids, but she'll get blamed for all the deaths Tina's supporters can possibly attribute to her.

But those left didn't necessarily feel "rescued" as the townsfolk had assumed they would. They buried their friends, who hadn't been involved at all except to be near Billy when Marsha burst in.

(Note how cleverly this Tina supporter words it: the dead ones were "involved" because Marsha "burst in" and were merely "near Billy", not because Billy burst in, took hostages, and killed a few. This sort of willfully-manipulative rhetoric is a classic means by which Tina and her supporters convince many of the moral equivalence of good and evil.)

They had never really liked or trusted Marsha -- they knew her past -- but they also didn't condone Billy's violence.

Of course, some of them recognized that, by allowing Billy to commit violence unchecked by themselves, they were virtually condoning it. Still, instead of blaming themselves, it was so easy to blame Marsha for the ill effects of having Billy around, free to do what he wants.

But then, reacting to their loss much as most of the townsfolk had, they suddenly saw Marsha in a different light. Suddenly, Billy didn't seem so crazy. They still disliked violence, but what else could they do? In an ironic reflection of the previous words of Marsha's supporters, they gathered together, grit their teeth, and said "We must do what has to be done".

Yes, having left it to Marsha to dispose of Billy, they then threw in their lot with Tina, helpepd her kill Marsha, Jacob, and all supporters of the Marsha/Jacob ideology of individual choice and freedom, and spent the rest of their days being virtual slaves to Tina. Any desire some might have had to rise up and overthrow her was quelched by killing the only real, practical defender of their freedoms they ever had -- Marsha, who they had killed for daring to take practical action in response to Billy's demonstrated desire for blood.

Repeat endlessly, in various villages of different sizes, over and over... and you have human history.

Pretty much.

If I've learned one thing from this, it's that learning history doesn't stop it from repeating -- it just lets you recognize it when it's happening.

Yup.

And it now seems quite clear what side of history you're on.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

Hmm, I didn't read that as meaning "estimated 100K lives of those living under Taliban rule saved", which is what I thought you claimed had been said.

That is what was said. You didn't read it that way because you're a semi-literate idiot of incomprehensible stupidity and a brain shielded by three feet of cement against outside thought. To quote:

"The number of lives saved is estimated to be in excess of 100,000 over the next few years, mostly woman and children. They have been saved because food supplies can now reach famine stricken areas. Something not possible when the Taliban ran things."

How the hell could you not read that as saving lives "of those living under Taliban rule"?! It's explicit! What, did you think he was saying that the Taliban was blocking food shipments to famine-stricken areas in Somalia?! Or maybe the Taliban was so evil that they were causing people to starve to death right here in the U.S. (land of Democracy!)! No, no, wait... You thought that when all the other Middle East nations saw how morally superior we are that they'd see the light, embrace Democracy, and use that to feed their starving children!

Jeeze, you should just end all your posts with "I'm an idiot. Q.E.D.", since that seems to be the subtext of every word you utter.

So, no, I don't buy the Divine Right argument.

Ah, glad to know you think we can fall out of favor. So it's only George W. Bush who rules by Divine Right. Haha. He's the source of our moral (and thus military) superiority -- a man who thinks free speech should be limited to stop people from making fun of him? The man who wanted to bully his freedom-abusing "anti-terrorism" bill through Congress? This is the man who "loves freedom democracy" enough to grant us victory over the Taliban? The man who grants corporate interests whatever they desire because it lines his own pockets to do so? The man who wants to let criminal MS off the hook because it would "shake up our economy"? Who benefited more than the Taliban did from the attack? Haha! Oh god, I'm dying here. You'll question the Democrat's actions, but you aren't even inquisitive about what happens when a Republican is in office. I would take heart that we mostly agree about the Sudanese incident , but since your "reasoning" is basically a direct repitition of the Official Republican Party Line on the subject, and you don't show any other critical thinking skills, I can't use it to think that maybe - maybe - you can open your eyes and see reality past your Democracy-colored glasses. Your particular brand of insanity only lets you home in on the actions of that one individual, and not consider all the other actions taken by other (and oddly Republican) Presidents in the Middle East. Do the words Iran Contra mean a fucking thing to you? Oh no, it's all that damn dirty Democrat liar's fault! He ruined our moral integrity so that our Freedom Force-Field (powered by Democracy!) could be breached by terrorists! But Bush not only has better policy, he's morally superior, and it's proven by our ability to drop smart bombs from stealth fighters (they're cloaked with Justice!) that "accidentaly" blow up civilans! If God didn't want them dead, He would have stopped the bombs! Haha! No, no... If God didn't want us to bomb them, He wouldn't have given us bombs! It's sad, because you're an offense to those who are merely mindlessly partisan and closed minded. Rush Limbaugh (who is at least smarter than a very, very stupid rock) would disown you.

Your other, mind-bendingly insane post demonstrates exactly what you think, you damn loon. Your crazy "right makes might" philosophy (if something so primitive can be called by such a lofty name) is tainted by your politics, which seem to have been aquired by shoving a Jerry Fallwel book up your ass until it hit your brain stem. The result is one of the most bizarre (yet stupid) things I've ever seen. It's oddly fascinating, like roadkill. Which explains that smell of rotting flesh coming from your head.

*sigh* Well, I'm actually starting to get bored of mocking you, so I'm done. Thanks for being so insane/stupid. It's been fun.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

Nothing I said implied that nation X winning a victory over nation Y meant it was morally superior.

Sorry, couldn't resist... You're such an idiot, you don't even know what you say means.

Yet the history of what I'd call morally superior cultures suggests that they need not have "on-paper" military muscle that matches the enemy to win.

What history shows is two things: a nation-state, culture, people, whatever, that values human life, democracy, freedom of thought, and so on, will be able to defeat an enemy possessing greater numbers, land, and ammunition, if that enemy doesn't value those things nearly as much.

Therefore, the fact that Al Queda is militarily inferior to the USA suggests that it is morally inferior as well, since it is willing to target innocent civilians to achieve political aims.

Morally superior nations win over morally inferior wons. You say this explecitly and repeatedly, using almost those exact words. Morally superior implies victory. You're retarded ass can't even make the logical leap with your own statement to see that the contrapositive - Not victory implies not morally superior -- follows directly! You even actually say that, but still don't understand what you, yourself, typed! Not even a logic consequence, or a "natural extension", but the very words you typed!

Or, you're an idiot. Q.E.D.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

Like I said, I'm bored of mocking you, so I'm responding to the only vaguely insightful thing you've said. It's not a gem - it's really just a rock. But it stands out from the shit as though it were the Hope Diamond.

Actually, the townsfolk themselves did that, via their "United Townsfolk" organization, thinking that the solution to homelessness was to take other people's property and give it to the homeless.

You're right. You're actually right. But you're not so right that you aren't still a retard. The action was taken by the UN, but that does nothing to reduce our role in that action, what with being a superpower and all. And in the analogy, it was from the perspective of those pissed off about the action, and they don't care about whatever dismissive crap you want to pile on the issue. They don't care about the difference between subtle control and unsubtle control.

Despite trying to give you a serious response, I'm not interested in yours. I'm done mocking, and there's nothing else I could do with more insane reversals of cause and effect where their hatred of us causes them to be pissed about us fucking with them instead of the reverse. You're a loon, and your cyclical logic that our justification is that we're morally superior, and we're morally superior because we're justified. You are ignorant of history -- even recent -- and actions taken by your own country.

Okay, I'm starting to mock again. I'm done now. Really.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

Nothing I said implied that nation X winning a victory over nation Y meant it was morally superior.

Sorry, couldn't resist... You're such an idiot, you don't even know what you say means.

I apologize for being such an idiot. Sadly, there appears to be nothing I can do about that at present.

Yet the history of what I'd call morally superior cultures suggests that they need not have "on-paper" military muscle that matches the enemy to win.

Here I did not intend to say (nor believe I said) that they therefore always will win, and that such victories therefore always imply moral superiority.

What history shows is two things: a nation-state, culture, people, whatever, that values human life, democracy, freedom of thought, and so on, will be able to defeat an enemy possessing greater numbers, land, and ammunition, if that enemy doesn't value those things nearly as much.

Again, here, I did not say "will always defeat". Further, I used the word "nearly" to suggest there must be quite a chasm in the way the nation-state treats its individual citizens to make up for an on-paper disadvantage.

Therefore, the fact that Al Queda is militarily inferior to the USA suggests that it is morally inferior as well, since it is willing to target innocent civilians to achieve political aims.

Here, "suggests" was way too strong on my part, especially taking the statement in isolation. It should have said something like "prompts consideration of whether it is morally inferior".

Put another way: if Al Queda was sufficiently moral as an organization, surely the Islamic communities, being pious (at least to my distant view), would wholeheartedly embrace it, fund it, be sure it is able to defend itself, and project its power where necessary.

The USA, on the other hand, has had that kind of support, both from its own citizens and from other nations, including those it soundly defeated only decades earlier (Germany, Japan) or centuries earlier (Britain).

Now, support from powerful friends does not imply morality, but the fact that powerful friends that do not normally interfere with each others' business to a high degree are willing to offer support in a risky environment (read: they're all targets of Al Queda as well) suggests that the USA isn't a morally repugnant animal, the way Al Queda is in most pertinent quarters.

Morally superior nations win over morally inferior [ones]. You say this explecitly and repeatedly, using almost those exact words.

Again, sorry for the confusion my poorly worded quotes caused. As should be clear (finally), I meant only this: morally superior nations can win over militarily superior, yet morally inferior, ones. Sometimes without even firing much of a shot (USA vs. USSR, for example).

Morally superior implies victory.

I'd hardly put it that way.

I'd say morally superior, in the sense I mean of morality (not killing people for political ends, for example, thus allowing more vigorous political discourse in society), implies a degree of military, as well as socioeconomic, superiority that is hard to quantify, especially in the eyes of those who don't value (or share) that morality, from the outside.

Some of the Founding Fathers of the USA seem to have shared a related vision of a nation that didn't have a standing army, but would spontaneously defend itself against attack, in the form of individual land-owning (and thus "self-interested" in the security of the nation) citizens taking up arms as needed.

Not that the USA has remained true to that model, but its behavior before, and response to, being seriously attacked has patterned that model in several instances.

And where it has made moral miscalculations -- that is, misunderstood the degree to which ordinary citizens would fight for what they believed was right -- the US has not fared so well (e.g. Vietnam, where the "moral justification" the US typically has, of defending the nation against direct attack, was absent).

The challenge is not so much to never make a moral mistake, but rather to learn from that mistake...which I believe the US did following Vietnam, and which I hope and pray many in Islam have been doing even more sincerely since 9/11.

(Relating back to my mythical story: Marsha has been hoping Billy would change his ways, because she greatly admires his willingness to act, to stick his neck out, compared to the relative cowardice of the population. If Billy figured out that behaving uprightly was way better than behaving badly, he'd make a great ally, as happened to several other bad boys whom Marsha cluesticked into correction awhile earlier.)

You're retarded ass can't even make the logical leap with your own statement to see that the contrapositive - Not victory implies not morally superior -- follows directly!

Oh, I understand that perfectly, being a computer programmer. That's why I take the trouble to correct/clarify my statements; it would severely undercut much of what I'm trying to say about morality. The issue of how to defend morality per se vs. defending people who generally share that morality against those who don't by choosing to temporarily set aside that morality is important to me. I believe saying "any victory implies moral superiority" would ultimately undercut my "message" urging people to carefully consider these issues for themselves.

But I'm sure my retarded ass makes plenty of other mistakes, so your point is well taken.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

Hmm, I didn't read that as meaning "estimated 100K lives of those living under Taliban rule saved", which is what I thought you claimed had been said.

That is what was said.

I'm sorry, I was referring to this quote:

"Our goal is to save lives from further civilian attacks. Thousands more people die, versus a few hundred."

That's what dvdeug wrote in his earlier message in this thread.

I didn't take that as referring to lives under the Taliban, though I guess maybe that's what he meant, though I would think "civilian attacks" meant attacks on the US, not Afghans, without knowing the context better.

And note that I entered the discussion shortly after his message in the thread, when you started stating what appeared to be equations not needing much in the way of context.

You didn't read it that way because you're a semi-literate idiot of incomprehensible stupidity and a brain shielded by three feet of cement against outside thought.

Oh, sure, but that's because of the space aliens trying to infiltrate my brain, and, as to my being a "semi-literate idiot", well, both my parents were Republicans, so it's not my fault.

To quote:

"The number of lives saved is estimated to be in excess of 100,000 over the next few years, mostly woman and children. They have been saved because food supplies can now reach famine stricken areas. Something not possible when the Taliban ran things."

How the hell could you not read that as saving lives "of those living under Taliban rule"?!

I guess because I simply did not read it in the first place, therefore my interpretative skills vis-a-vis the quote were somewhat lacking.

Ah, now I found it, further up in the thread.

And I see the problem: you responded by saying "That's our justification", referring to the saving of an estimated 100K (or whatever) lives under the Taliban.

But that isn't our justification. I mean, it's not what I've heard Bush or Rummie (admittedly, I rarely listen) or most anyone else say. Most of the justification is "its self-defense".

Saving lives under the Taliban is a desired side-effect, and justifies why we don't "just nuke Afghanistan", as some gonzo-warriors wanted shortly after 9/11, more than it does going to war there in the first place, IMO.

Looking back at your messages, it's hard to see whether you're saying it is our justification, or that it isn't.

Perhaps all you meant to do was refute an apparent claim that it was justifiable to kill 1K-3K Afghan innocents to save an estimated 100K more via knocking down the Taliban.

If so, that was hard to tell from the wording of any individual message you posted, especially for a semi-literate idiot (etc.) like myself.

Or maybe you meant to focus narrowly on the issue of whether it's okay for Westerners to not go hysterical over the reports of civilian casualties in Afghanistan -- in which case, your moral-equivalency stuff sure sent a mixed message, since that seemed to apply to a much broader scope.

My take: rossz, the one you quote, was suggesting that maybe killing 1K-3K Afghans wasn't worth going bananas over because we figure, in the long run, we saved maybe 100K of similarly innocent ones, while taking reasonable precautions against further unfettered attacks on us by Al Queda.

In a sense, he's right: given that the West (US heading it up) has undertaken the operation, the comparative figures suggest we shouldn't panic over the current rates of loss of life, especially given the apparent success of the operation. (Hardly the "quagmire" that was both predicted before, and claimed during, the first month or so.)

However, I agree with you that this should not form anywhere near a complete justification for waging war against another nation, if that's what you meant to say.

I disagree, of course, with the assertion you appeared to make, that the mere fact that we're accidentally (despite our best efforts in this war) killing civilians makes us morally equivalent to al Queda, whose goal is to murder as many civilians in the West as possible.

Jeeze, you should just end all your posts with "I'm an idiot. Q.E.D.", since that seems to be the subtext of every word you utter.

I figure it's fairly implicit in my signature, the web site I link to, and, as you point out, the subtext of every word I utter.

(Kinda like why I don't write "I write in English" in my signature; it's obvious, right?)

But thanks for the advice. I'll take it under consideration.

So, no, I don't buy the Divine Right argument.

Ah, glad to know you think we can fall out of favor. So it's only George W. Bush who rules by Divine Right.

Huh? Who said that? Sure, he hasn't (to our knowledge) committed lewd sex acts with interns half his age, lied under oath, had his law license revoked, and so on, but that hardly makes him a Divine Leader! ;-/

Haha. He's the source of our moral (and thus military) superiority -- a man who thinks free speech should be limited to stop people from making fun of him?

I'd really love a link to a quote supporting that, besides the simple "there should be limits to freedom" he uttered offhand, apparently in response to seeing a negative web site.

I mean, it's not like he's going all-out for campaign finance reform, which seems to include provisions making it even harder for citizens to criticize incumbents shortly before an election (something he, as an outed DUI'er, should theoretically appreciate!).

Me, I like to think Bush43 is just about as idiotic as I am. The great thing about us idiots is, we're so busy trying to figure out stuff like eating pretzels, putting on socks, and reading books without lots of pictures, we're too busy to contemplate how to run everyone else's lives.

I'm dying here.

I'll pray for you, if you like.

You'll question the Democrat's actions, but you aren't even inquisitive about what happens when a Republican is in office.

I'm too dumb to be inquisitive. I couldn't miss knowing about White House actions when Clinton was in office -- he was always in my face, so to speak, telling me how great my life would be if I'd only let him (or his wife) run it. It's like the guy couldn't avoid a camera to save his life.

But I didn't even vote for Bush43, so it's not like I'm totally in love with that guy either...just, so far, he's been less in my face, trying to take away rights I happen to cherish, than Clinton, and he hasn't wildly reversed course on promises he made (yet), like promising to cut my taxes and then raising them retroactively as soon as he was elected like Clinton did.

And, as bad as Ashcroft might be, wake me up when he rolls some tanks into a compound of poor left-wing religious nuts, killing them all in the process...until then, I figure I've seen worse and, for better or worse, survived.

I would take heart that we mostly agree about the Sudanese incident , but since your "reasoning" is basically a direct repitition of the Official Republican Party Line on the subject, and you don't show any other critical thinking skills, I can't use it to think that maybe - maybe - you can open your eyes and see reality past your Democracy-colored glasses.

I don't wear glasses. And I hardly worship democracy -- it's tyranny of the majority, if you ask me. I happen to think our democratic republic is pretty good compared to alternatives I'm aware of that have been demonstrated to at least limp along for more than a couple of generations, but, most important, people have to be moral and willing to stick their necks out more for moral than selfish reasons, generally, for any system of governance to operate properly.

I.e. I think forms of government are idiot-proof just like computer systems are (i.e. they're not).

Your particular brand of insanity only lets you home in on the actions of that one individual, and not consider all the other actions taken by other (and oddly Republican) Presidents in the Middle East. Do the words Iran Contra mean a [] thing to you?

Oh, sure, and I still have reservations about what in the world Reagan was trying to accomplish, what with trying to get some American hostages freed and all.

But, frankly, I am unaware of the existence of lots of Muslims unhappy with that incident. I figured all the unhappy ones were Democrats, Communists, and so on, but not Muslims. I should research it more.

And, of course, it was Reagan who tucked tail and ran after the barracks bombing in Lebanon, akin to Clinton's response to a series of terrorist attacks on the US throughout his term. (I don't really put the attack on the USS Cole in that category; it was a guerilla-style attack, perhaps, but not terrorist exactly, since, like the barracks attack, the target was purely military.)

While I suspect Reagan's response to the barrack attacks suggested to some that the US didn't have much resolve, it's also reasonable to think they might have been aware of our fortitude vis-a-vis the USSR and not come to too hasty a conclusion.

Whereas, we apparently have bin Laden's own words "thanking" Clinton for his handling of the Somalia incident, "proving" our spinelessness, as our attack on the Sudanese plant probably "proved" our immorality to many Muslims.

I'll concede, though, that as Reagan was distracted by the USSR and its Stalinesque history of mass murder and expansionism, Clinton was distracted by the GOP and its Gingrichesque history of trying to lower taxes and conform to the Independent Counsel law the Democrats put in place (and now return to loving, thanks to Enron).

Oh no, it's all that damn dirty Democrat liar's fault!

You sound like my dad, who taught me my most important political lesson as a teenager.

We were alone on a boating trip and, beer in hand, he launched into his usual rant about welfare, morality, and so on (not that he was a paragon of morality, but this was a political rant).

He actually said something very close to this:

"So they blame others for being on welfare, they blame others for their immorality. It's blame, blame, blame. Blame him, blame her, blame them, but never blame themselves.

"And, the thing is, it's all the Democrats' fault!"

I am alive today because of my skill at avoiding laughing out loud.

But that episode taught me that labels don't substitute for rationality, morality, and so on. His being a Republican made him no smarter or better than anyone else, in that specific case. Even though he was very smart, he, like anyone else, could be dumb in an instant (like you say I am all the time).

(And, yes, I realize you're parodying what you believe is my line of thinking.)

It's sad, because you're an offense to those who are merely mindlessly partisan and closed minded. Rush Limbaugh (who is at least smarter than a very, very stupid rock) would disown you.

Your other, mind-bendingly insane post demonstrates exactly what you think, you damn loon. Your crazy "right makes might" philosophy (if something so primitive can be called by such a lofty name) is tainted by your politics, which seem to have been aquired by shoving a Jerry Fallwel book up your ass until it hit your brain stem. The result is one of the most bizarre (yet stupid) things I've ever seen. It's oddly fascinating, like roadkill. Which explains that smell of rotting flesh coming from your head.

Been watching reruns of the "dead parrot" sketch a lot lately?

*sigh* Well, I'm actually starting to get bored of mocking you, so I'm done. Thanks for being so insane/stupid. It's been fun.

"I exist only to serve."

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

Actually, the townsfolk themselves did that, via their "United Townsfolk" organization, thinking that the solution to homelessness was to take other people's property and give it to the homeless.

You're right. You're actually right. But you're not so right that you aren't still a retard. The action was taken by the UN, but that does nothing to reduce our role in that action, what with being a superpower and all.

It does nothing to reduce our role in the action, compared to your depiction of the US being fully responsible -- Marsha unilaterally deciding to move Jacob into Bill's house??

Surely you can't mean that. Because that would imply that the only way the USA could escape full culpability for that act would be if it had launched all-out war on the UN to prevent it happening.

And in the analogy, it was from the perspective of those pissed off about the action, and they don't care about whatever dismissive crap you want to pile on the issue.

No, the analogy was from an objective viewpoint, illustrating the distinctions between how people view reality and reality itself.

I realize it helps your case to keep ignoring my questions and keep distorting the analogy in your favor, while rarely bringing anything new into the discussion that might not favor your case (as compared to my own efforts, where I do so often), but it sure seems like a waste of time.

No wonder you're giving up and going home, spitting back at me in the process.

Despite trying to give you a serious response, I'm not interested in yours.

How serious can your response truly be, when you don't answer straightforward questions, like, did my original analogy, with a morally neutral backstory, suggest to you Marsha was morally equivalent, in her actions, to Billy?

Nor did you address the issues I raised concerning the use of political rhetoric to "tame" immorality, as far as I can tell. Instead, you've responded by just slamming me left and right, like an angry dog with a bunny in its mouth.

I'm a very sad little bunny.

I'm done mocking, and there's nothing else I could do with more insane reversals of cause and effect where their hatred of us causes them to be pissed about us fucking with them instead of the reverse.

Head...spinning...must...lie...down....

You're a loon, and your cyclical logic that our justification is that we're morally superior, and we're morally superior because we're justified.

Sentence missing something.

You are ignorant of history -- even recent -- and actions taken by your own country.

Thanks for trying to educate me (NOT!!).

Okay, I'm starting to mock again. I'm done now. Really.

Promise?

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Anonymous Coward]

Me: "So, an idiot like yourself looks ONLY at collateral damage and says "gee, same numbers, the perpetrators must be equally evil"."

You: "Only someone so thoroughly afraid of thinking about reality could think calling dead people "collateral damage" changes anything. You have an action which you know will kill civilians, even though they aren't your "target". You take the action. Civilians die. You then say it was an accident. They're "collateral damage". You're not responsible, because you "didn't mean to". Only a fool like you would think that's logicaly tenable. A doctor who kills her patient because she took an action that would almost certainly result in death doesn't get off the hook just because she didn't want them to die."

So you believe the doctor is just as immoral as the assassin who murders someone? Oooooookaaaaaayyy then!

You: "You are a moron of epic proportions. I say this..."

...apparently because you like to say it a lot!

You: "because a moron of normal stature would be able to see that the past centuries have not been spent making weapons more precise to save civilian lives, but making them more deadly. From the trebuchet to the gatling gun to the cluster bomb, you are proven a fool again and again."

You: "Weapons are made more precise because they are more effective that way, not because of any notion of "saving lives" (except those of our own soldiers)."

Then why do they keep making weapons that kill FEWER people when they have NUKES that could SOLVE THE WHOLE FRIGGIN PROBLEM in a half-hour???

You: "You've seen films of bomb runs on German factories in WWII, didn't you? Did you see the number of planes they flew, and number of bombs they had to drop? Smart bombs that can drop down the chimney of a factory and explode are much more efficient and more importantly more likely to destroy the target."

No. They still likely to MISS the target, which a TACTICAL NUKE probably wouldn't.

But that'd KILL CIVILIANS, right?

Hey, why did the TALIBAN and AL QUEDA resort to HIDING IN MOSQUES, neighborhoods, and hospitals? Why do these Arab types keep putting their MILITARY complexes right next to SCHOOLS and HOSPITALS, which we usually DON'T in the USA??

Maybe it's 'cause they know WE DON'T TARGET CIVILIANS.

But we know THEY DO.

You: "How can you even utter the statement that weapons are developed out of "compassion for innocents" in regards to the same country that invented the air-burst incendiary bomb and Agent Orange?"

Because, by inventing them and using them once in a while, we don't have to continually use COARSE WEAPONS OF MASS CIVILIAN DESTRUCTION because our ENEMIES know we CAN AND WILL DEFEND OURSELVES, just mebbe???

And, unlike those Al Queda types, we don't use these weapons against our own people, against our NEIGHBORS to force them to BUY OUR BURGERS or whatever.

Me: "Meanwhile, what has militant Islam done but embrace the concept that THE MORE INNOCENTS THEY KILL, THE EASIER IT IS TO PERSUADE ENEMIES TO SURRENDER?"

You: "Maybe they learned it from us."

I didn't know US history went back a whole MILLENIUM!!

You: "After all, wasn't that the justification behind completely destroying two entire cities in WWII?"

Dude, here's a CLUE: the PEOPLE in the CITIES were COMMITTED to KILLING US WHOLESALE. We were at WAR. We did not BOMB AFGHAN CITIES before 9/11, did we??

You: "when it is us faced with a situation in which we can achieve our goals only through massive and deliberate slaughter of civilians (and debateably no other way), we do it, and you don't call us "evil"."

It was a pretty EVIL thing to do, to KILL CIVILIANS to FORCE A WAR-WAGING NATION to SURRENDER instead of TAKING US OVER.

So mebbe it was the LESSER OF TWO EVILS. Lotsa people were gonna DIE either way. Better them than us.

Meanwhile, THEY could just live with the fact that we're hanging around in their hood. Why not? We deal with the fact that THEY hang around in OURS. We got mosques, we got arabs, we got indonesians, and WE COPE, doggonit!

Me: "Where are the precision munitions being developed and used by organizations like Al Queda so they can AVOID killing innocent civilians in enemy nations?"

You: "Because we didn't supply them with those types of munitions when we were arming them during the Russian invasion?"

They are RACIALLY or CULTURALLY INCAPABLE of developing PRECISE MUNITIONS?? Is THAT what you are saying??

Because, from where I'M sitting, if they'd stop SCREWING AROUND with each other and ISRAEL and get down to making NATIONS where they actually OBEY SOME REAL LAWS instead of the stupid GNAT-SQUEEZING EXCUSE FOR ISLAMIC LAW they spend all their time and energy on, they could be ARMED TO THE TEETH like the USA in just a GENERATION or two.

But NO, instead of sending their sons and daughters to SCHOOLS that teach SCIENCE, MATH, POLITICS, and stuff, they make them memorize the KORAN, rocking and chanting like bobbing birdies, and teach them "WAGE JIHAD", "ISRAEL MUST BE ELIMINATED", and "AMERICA IS EVIL".

The USA didn't waste time with that kind of crap, which is why WE have some REAL GUNS, even though WE have been around only a few hundred years, while ARAB MUSLIMS have been around, what, 1700 of them or so?

And they've got UNLIMITED OIL, meaning UNLIMITED MONEY, and they STILL can't get it right. I mean, to R&D&P OUR guns, we gotta buy THEIR OIL, and to pay for THAT, we gotta sell MCDONALDS to their KIDS and give a chunk of that change to our military.

And STILL we kick their butts up and down every mountain in 'gannystan, while most of us sit at home watching the SUPER BOWL.

You: "It's a sign of just how far you are from rational that your whole "argument" depends on the fact that now, today we have the ability to launch smart bombs and cruise missles that minimize civilian death. Before Dessert Storm, we didn't have that capability -- and it made no difference. We carpet-bombed, napalmed, and clustered-bombed to achieve our goals, and the civilian casualties did nothing to stop us then."

I thought it wasn't just WE, but a COALITION OF NATIONS. (Hey, did we really NAPALM? That's pretty cool...thought it went out with 'nam.)

And I think that COALITION is pretty darn happy with the fact that our SMART, BIG BOMBS meant they could be in charge of PEACEKEEPING and HOUSEKEEPING, leaving US in charge of ASS-KICKING.

I mean, like you say yourself, WE did the BEST WE COULD with WHAT WE HAD, but the UNITED NATIONS decided they had to be KICKED BACK TO BAGHDAD.

Where we COULDA wiped 'em out, and maybe SHOULDA, but DIDN'T, because we wanted to PRESERVE THEIR CIVILIAN ORDER and look for the best option OUT of that situation.

Me: "Our intent is obvious."

You: "You poor fool. Do you -really- think that if al queda had a military as large and advanced as ours that they would resort to blowing office buildings?"

Why bother, when they'd rather be NUKING ATLANTA (buh-bye CNN), NUKING WASHINGTON (buh-bye CONGRESS), NUKING ORLANDO (buh-bye DISNEY WORLD), until we ALL converted our GLOWING WHITE ASSES to ISLAM.

You: "Don't you think they'd much rather just drive our military out of the region?"

Why would they care so much about THAT to DIE trying to make it happen? Why don't they just OVERTHROW the FRIGGIN ROYAL FAMILIES in their territories, install at least HALF-ASSED GOVERNMENTS in their place, get their collective ACT together, and give us an EXCUSE to get our military out of their pathetic little corner of the world??

You: "Don't you think it is the fact that this is clearly impossible that leaves them with what options they have? Do you think our government is truly any different, and if they were faced with the same choice they wouldn't choose the same?"

One-word answer: CUBA.

(You dimwit.)

Me: "For that matter, can you point to ANY rational discussion among prominent militant Muslims that actually identifies most victims of 9/11 as "innocent"?"

You: "Since "innocent" isn't a rational word, I can't say I'm surprised."

WTF?? Use "noncombatants" or whatever the KORAN calls 'em.

Stop trying to dance around semantics like a pansy.

You: "What difference does "innocence" make? What are they innocent of?"

Why don't you ask some of your Muslim friends whether INNOCENCE means JACK-SQUAT when it comes to KILLING someone in their religion?

Then maybe you'll stop trashing their RELIGION in PUBLIC by claiming they don't care whether people are INNOCENT, combatants, whatever.

You: "If everyone in the building had been a convicted child molester, would it have been a commendable action?"

Again, WTF??? I meant INNOCENT, as in INNOCENT OF ATTACKING ARAB ISLAMS.

You: "No one deserves to die like that, and being "innocent" doesn't mean anything."

The next knock on your door might be a MUSLIM wishing to EDUCATE YOU PROPERLY about his RELIGION.

You: "Rational people (who aren't trying to inspire an emotional reaction in non-rationals such as yourself) think more in terms of civilians. Miltary personnel don't deserve to die, but at least they have accepted the risk. At least in countries that don't have mandatory military service."

Then why not ANSWER THE FRIGGIN QUESTION I asked, as if I said "civilians"!!

You: "First, if you can actually demonstrate how a blown-up building is a threat to our cultural identity then I'll take back every bad thing I said about you, and fly to the moon using only the power of love."

I wasn't TALKING about "a blown-up building".

I was TALKING about LOTS of actions AMERICANS have taken, at their own personal risk, to PRESERVE LIFE WORLDWIDE, sometimes even MUSLIM LIVES, for which nobody thanks us that I can see.

But, here's a clue: it wasn't ONE building, it was TWO, plus the PENTAGON, plus the PLANE CRASHED INTO PA, plus the PROMISE OF MORE TO COME unless we CHANGE OUR WAYS and FLY RIGHT (convert to ISLAM).

You tell ME how we can preserve our cultural identity while we WITHDRAW COMPLETELY FROM ALL MAINLY ISLAMIC REGIONS, let ISRAEL be DESTROYED, and let them develop NUKES so they can FORCE EVERYONE TO WORSHIP ALLAH THEIR WAY.

I'm waiting.

You: "Second, if you think our government has been "STRIVING TO PRESERVE INNOCENT LIFE", your Patriot Hamster has been busy making up new propoganda for you to believe. How hard did this government strive in Somalia before they gave up? They didn't even acknowledge Rwanda until there was virtually no more "innocent" life to protect."

You mean, if we don't DIE TO SAVE LIVES every SINGLE OPPORTUNITY we get, NOTHING we ever DO to save lives means JACK SQUAT???

You mean the BLACK HAWK GUYS who DIED as part of the effort to SAVE SOMALIA don't rate any CREDIT in your book?

Is there ANYONE or ANYTHING you credit for SAVING LIVES? That has NEVER FAILED to sacrifice himself or itself in EVERY CASE where such sacrifice might be helpful??

No? Didn't think so.

You: "Third, how can you call our government the "NOSECONE" of Western humanitarian efforts? In the UN summit on race, when Israel's tendency to kill a hundred palestinians for every dead Israeli soldier was brought up, two countries walked out. Israel... and us. Not even the rest of the Western World sees us like you describe. Not even our government tries to portray itself as the preservers of all that is good that you suggest."

We're the NOSECONE of the REAL STRUGGLE TO PROMOTE CIVILIZATION.

That doesn't mean attending every BACKWATER, SELF-DELUSIONAL attempt to "discuss racism" while refusing to discuss PALESTINIAN RACISM, AFRICAN RACISM, etc.

We're just TOO DAMN BUSY saving the WORLD to bother validating stupid MEETINGS like THAT.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[Chris Burke]

I'm drawing quotes from several previous posts. If this gets confusing... tough. I don't mock you at all in this post, except to exercise my love of self-referntial sentences and admit that maybe you deserve it.

It does nothing to reduce our role in the action, compared to your depiction of the US being fully responsible -- Marsha unilaterally deciding to move Jacob into Bill's house??

That's right. Sharing responsibility doesn't reduce it. If there were 500 people in Al Qaeda all with equal authority to bin Laden, and all agreed to bomb the WTC, each would be as culpable as bin Laden is by himself today.

Surely you can't mean that. Because that would imply that the only way the USA could escape full culpability for that act would be if it had launched all-out war on the UN to prevent it happening.

Um, no. Having it be not our idea, and not agree with the idea, would reduce our culpability greatly. If it was plausible that we were a dissenting minority, pressured somehow into accepting the majority decision, that would be sufficient. Given the U.S.'s position after WWII, however, it is difficult to see what "pressure" could have been great enough to cause us to bow. But that's beside the point, because we didn't bow, we agreed whole-heartedly.

No, the analogy was from an objective viewpoint, illustrating the distinctions between how people view reality and reality itself.

Once I got done with it, yes. You see, when you said in the other post...

(Note how cleverly this Tina supporter words it: the dead ones were "involved" because Marsha "burst in" and were merely "near Billy", not because Billy burst in, took hostages, and killed a few. This sort of willfully-manipulative rhetoric is a classic means by which Tina and her supporters convince many of the moral equivalence of good and evil.)

... you weren't pointing out some horrible flaw in my analogy, or the "classc means" of Tina... I was demonstrating events as seen by those bystanders. You see, the third person perspective does not need be objective. In literature, it rarely is. And honestly, you must take into account subjective point of view to have any hope of analyzing this situation. You use events as you see them to make moral judgements and practical evaluations. Others do the same. To discuss moral issues without perspective, to pretend to be able to discuss them "objectively", is to accept that one's own view is the only one worthy of judging. You yourself have judged events based solely on your own experience, but called it "objective". By seeing how someone else experienced something, and trying to understand it, you expand your possible viewpoints to include another view. This is not the path to objectivity (which is still impossible -- you cannot escape subjectivity, no more than you can escape the perception of self), it is the path to having more than one subjective viewpoint from which to judge things. I believe that having more viewpoints is always good, and I also believe that you can understand another viewpoint and find it valid without agreeing with it (which doesn't seem to be a commonly held belief). So yes, I included a stilted viewpoint that is as those people see it. The purpose was to show how their viewpoint on Marsha's actions leads to similar decisions on their part as did the townsfolk's viewpoint on Billy's actions.

How serious can your response truly be, when you don't answer straightforward questions,like, did my original analogy, with a morally neutral backstory, suggest to you Marsha was morally equivalent, in her actions, to Billy?

Perhaps because that is a ridiculous question. Your story was about as "morally neutral" as the Brother's Grimm are neutral on the subject of gender roles. You stilted it as much as you could, or at least that's what you would have been doing if you weren't presenting what you see as "reality". I didn't answer the question, because the answer is meaningless. I ignore things that aren't worth responding too, no matter how important you think they are. I normally don't answer meaningless questions. Yet I will, and the answer would be "no, they were not morally equivalent".

In another post, you said:

First, how about you answer the question based solely on the analogy, assuming a morally neutral backstory, without having to "decorate" in ways you didn't bother to mention in your posts morally equating the US with al Queda?

Ah, I see your issue now. When I posted without decoration or backstory, I didn't bother to mention it not because it is irrelevant, but because I assumed that since all the decorations are part of the public record, I didn't have to. Because intent is what matters, the backstory is critically important. It is by viewing one's actions over time that you can begin to determine intent. There is no better way to predict what someone would do in a certain situation than to study what they have done in previous situations. The past is the only guide we have to the future. Thus for the question of intent, the why not the what, we cannot ignore the backstory.

Which I hope explains why your analogy was not worth it to me to consider seriously, as it stood.

Now, with this understanding, let me explain my position. First, anytime I say "we", or "the US", I'm referring specifically to the government. In my (admittedly non-exhaustive, but also self-directed and not driven solely by popular conception or word of mouth) study of our own actions during and since WWII, I have concluded that our intent is to protect our own interests, both political and economic, by any means necessary. These "means" are restrained by political reality, public reaction to the means (if they are discovered), and our capabilities. Nothing else obvious comes to mind. Not an abiding sense of "goodness", to be sure. Which isn't to say that we don't think our interests are good. Fighting communism, preserving our solidarity, etc. I'll take it as given that we believe we are "in the right". Because I have no doubt that Al Qaeda, from its viewpoint, sees it's own goals as "in the right". In that way, we are similar. It is what we are willing to do to achieve those goals that I see the picture of similarity completed.

This is, of course, a conclusion you will not agree with, nor will you any time soon even if you decide to give it due consideration. It took me a long time, myself, and I was a cynic to begin with. But let me try to support it.

I started with the fact that there was a situation in which we decided to use not one, but two nuclear weapons. Targeted at civilians. No "accidental" death here. Justification is not important to argue for or against, because that would only establish the necessary modifier to my "any means". I personally (meaning from my viewpoint) do not think that it was necessary, but I can understand that from the viewpoint of the decision makers of the time it may have seemed so.

Now I fast-forward to post-Vietnam, not because of a lack of interesting data points, but because I wish to keep this short and get to the important part to show that my hypothesis applies recently, not just half a century ago.

You said that you thought that we had learned our lesson from Vietnam. And indeed we have. We have learned that it's better to use a proxy to fight our wars for us. The public reaction is less severe when it comes to the death of some other country's soldiers. It is easier to conceal the actions of a proxy, and thus prevent public reaction. It makes it possible to maneuver around political realities that would prevent us from dircetly intervening. And atrocities of the kind committed by our own soldiers in Vietnam achieve all of the above benefits as well. With a proxy, while your "means" are limited greatly by not being able to use your own forces, they are in other ways greatly liberated.

Central America in the 80's is a perfect example. Rather than dispose of unfavorable governments ourself, we paid for and directed rebellions against them. Nicaragua was such a case. They had overthrown a fascist regime that was created and supported by our own government, and proceded to do very well for themselves without our help, and without giving in to our business interests. They were starting to show communist tendencies, and the opposing groups that inevitably appeared were the tools by which we exercised our interests.

You see, Regan was trying to free hostages, which is surely a noble cause by itself, even if the method did make us war profiteers by selling weapons to both sides of a war at the same time. But that wasn't the extent of it. The profits of this war profiteering went to fund the Contras, since Congress had dropped support. Thus what had at first seemed like merely breaking the law and our stated policy on terrorism to save hostages ended up being just the means for us to further our interests in Central America.

Not that this was the only problem with the Contras. Outside of money from arms sales to Iran, the Contras were also funded by drug money, with the coordination and cooperation of the CIA. Massive amounts of cocaine entered this country, starting the boom of that and derivative drugs in the US. It is conspicuous in the detail that the CIA doesn't deny this, but merely asserts that an investigation of their financial records showed no evidence. That documents in the public record would contradict the former statement might explain why.

The Contras themselves engaged in actions that could be called terroristic. They didn't restrict themselves to military targets, by any means. And this wasn't just the unfortunate action of our tool -- they received training in many of these activities by us. Our field training manuals on interrogation were somewhat disturbing in that they argued against -direct- physical torture simply because it is ineffective -- recommending instead indirect physical pain, and mental pain. Torture, assassination, hired death squads. Is this the action of a morally superior government, or of one that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve its goals?

And of course all of this comes along with rampant concealment and manipulation of information. Clearly, public reaction can be manipulated both in extend and even existence, and thus increase those means which are available for achieving ends.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait, there was no proxy to fight for us. But that was fine, because political reality was such that we could engage them ourselves, with lots of help even. Whatever humanitarian reasons might have been given as motivations -- much like the saving of starving Afghans -- was so much crap, as we ignored Iraq's actions against the Kurds even as we supplied them with more weapons for their war with Iran.

And speaking of ignoring, despite our vow of "Never Again", our response to genocide has demonstrated that our intent is anything other than humanitarian. If there is one thing anyone in this century can agree on morally, it is that genocide represents one of the greatest evils imagineable. Yet when it happens in countries that are not of national interest, it is ignored by our Vietnam-wisened government. A pathetic bombing cannot compare to what happened in Rwanda, or in Bosnia. We never intervened in Rwanda, and what little action we took in Bosnia may have actually made it worse. In this case, our interest was to not get involved, and this was done by whatever method made this politically feasible. You blame Clinton for lying about getting his winky wet? What about lying about genocide and ethnic cleansing? Claiming ignorance so that we wouldn't have to get involved?

"By any means necessary" was a phrase Malcom X could have easily borrowed from the CIA handbook. We have done things that we would like people to believe only countries like China would do. We do these things, and we conceal them, lie about them, and justify them because of "national security". Our interests.

Willing to achieve its goals by any means necessary, limited only by political reality, capability, and public reaction. Am I talking about the US or Al Qaeda? I'm talking about both. Al Qaeda is operating within grossly different parameters of political reality, capability, and public reaction. These differences are the source of the conceptual problem of seeing the two groups as "the same", but that is only a matter of situation, of "viewpoint" not intent. The intent is the same -- what I want, no matter what. It is my conclusion that were the U.S. government to have the same limiting parameters as Al Qaeda, its actions would be no different. Thus, they are morally equivalent.

And, from my viewpoint, equally reprehensible.

So now you probably think I'm a loon. That's fine. Is it because my analysis of events is flawed? Or because you don't believe the events I describe transpired? The former may be true, or it may just depend on my own subjectivity. The latter... Well, that's really the triumph of our government. They can release documents proving what I've said, readily available under the FOIA, and people still don't believe it.

By the way, there is one question you haven't asked, though it's probably because you think you know the answer. You never asked me if I thought we should have attacked Afghanistan, even though we all know civilians would die. If you had asked, I would have said "I can't see what else we can do... So yes."

Necessity is a horrible thing.

You are ignorant of history -- even recent -- and actions taken by your own country.

Thanks for trying to educate me (NOT!!).

Thanks for making it sound like it's my fucking job! Educate yourself. I'm not your tutor.

But I'll throw you a bone. Outside of Google, a good place to start is
here.

Okay, I'm starting to mock again. I'm done now. Really.

Promise?

Hey, I didn't mock you, did I? And now I'm done, period. Happy truth-hunting. Cya on the other side.

Re:Amusing anecdote:

[cburley]

I'm drawing quotes from several previous posts. If this gets confusing... tough. I don't mock you at all in this post, except to exercise my love of self-referntial sentences and admit that maybe you deserve it.

It's easier to deal with in a single post than in several, so I think this is an improvement.

It does nothing to reduce our role in the action, compared to your depiction of the US being fully responsible -- Marsha unilaterally deciding to move Jacob into Bill's house??

That's right. Sharing responsibility doesn't reduce it. If there were 500 people in Al Qaeda all with equal authority to bin Laden, and all agreed to bomb the WTC, each would be as culpable as bin Laden is by himself today.

Okay, so we went from you implying the US had sole responsibility to merely sharing in responsibility, and though I agree that might not "reduce our role" in the strict sense, your original point vis-a-vis Marsha was that she did immoral things unilaterally and therefore deserved to suffer at the hands of Billy with no help from the townsfolk who you now appear to agree also bore responsibility for those things. (I believe the phrase you used was "without asking anyone else if they minded".)

Why couldn't the townsfolk just take responsibility for their own "immoral" decision and set it right, with or without Marsha's approval? Because they themselves are moral idiots, based on the story as you extended it: they murder Marsha down the road, for doing what they themselves could and should have done all along, but didn't because, supposedly, they were too "moral" to commit violence, even against a known felon. I.e. they murder a flawed hero because they couldn't bring themselves to stop a criminal.

Surely you can't mean that. Because that would imply that the only way the USA could escape full culpability for that act would be if it had launched all-out war on the UN to prevent it happening.

Um, no. Having it be not our idea, and not agree with the idea, would reduce our culpability greatly. If it was plausible that we were a dissenting minority, pressured somehow into accepting the majority decision, that would be sufficient. Given the U.S.'s position after WWII, however, it is difficult to see what "pressure" could have been great enough to cause us to bow. But that's beside the point, because we didn't bow, we agreed whole-heartedly.

With plenty of other nations, engaging in what's generally known as "the rule of law" with regard to international politics. A rule of law that, by the way, is crucial for any group to follow if it wishes to obtain international recognition as a nation-state.

An entity that willingly attacks a nation like the USA for participating in a legal decision it doesn't like is one that is, for all intents and purposes, attacking the rule of law itself -- hardly an astonishing thing to say about Palestinians, given the history of the rulers they choose for themselves, but, in this climate of nearly completely moral idiocy among global leadership, that's something that almost never seems to come up as a crucial distinction between Israel and Palestine (the former sometimes, as almost everyone does once in a while, disobeying the rule of law, the latter actually attacking its legitimacy and force at its roots and trunk).

As an illustration of this principle in operation here in the USA, we have plenty of people who disobey laws by stealing, lying, murdering, and so on, and we have a system of the rule of law that, accordingly, tries and sentences them.

But that system treats, in a severe way compared to a simplistic look at the "crime", those who attack the rule of law itself as a sort of "uber-criminal", and even treats people "badly" simply because they are considered, for the time being, a crucial part of the system.

For example, our justice systems often imprisons people precisely because they are considered, or hoped to be, fairly innocent -- decent, honest, fair, etc.

Who are these imprisoned people? Sequestered juries, important witnesses needing protection, and so on. They're considered crucial to the internal operation of the system, so they're actually treated worse than external actors of the same evident "moral status" (vis-a-vis threat or benefit to the system). Similarly, some people are treated better (e.g. judges), given privileges that they wouldn't have elsewhere despite doing similar jobs, because they happen to be internal to the system, and it's extremely difficult to construct a working system of any sort that treats its innards and external entities under the same objective rules.

And, while a Bill Clinton can get away with lying to a grand jury, let someone on a grand (or regular) jury act in a similarly "trivial" way -- e.g. have sex with a fellow juror and then lie about it -- the penalty can be far worse than a minor financial hit and the suspension of one's law license.

To someone who insists on some kind of cosmic, or objective, fairness in life, this seems perverted. Why should decent American citizens be imprisoned and prosecuted more severely as jurors and witnesses than the criminals the system is trying?

The answer lies in the fact, as you highlighted yourself, that the objective viewpoint is unavailable in any specific instance; that the system of the rule of law is, itself, a body that, like all other bodies of that general type (from single-cells creatures to governments to bodies of thought), must carefully distinguish between, and thus have somewhat different ("unfair") rules for, external and internal entities; and so on.

Though Israel perhaps cannot be counted on to go along with every single UN vote or meeting, it is far more supportive, in terms of how its elected leaders operate, of the concept of international rule of law than Palestinians -- it might disagree with a decision, but it is unlikely to take down the UN building in NYC to make its point, or kill a bunch of Saudi Arabian athletes in the Olympics, or send suicide bombers to kill as many innocent men, women, and children of the Islam and Christian faiths as possible. (From what I understand, this is the result of moral growth on the part of Israel -- that, just a few decades ago, Israel did carry out actions like these at least once or twice.)

That doesn't necessarily make Israel "morally superior" from the viewpoint of someone who, like me, seriously questions the necessity of human organization, especially along moral lines.

But it certainly goes a long way towards explaining why such organizations -- especially nation-state governments -- might choose to treat Israel more as a peer than they'll treat a potential Palestinian state.

In short, yes, Marsha and her comrades may well have made an "immoral" decision earlier in vis-a-vis Jacob's placement in Billy's house.

Yet that decision was made according to principles of the rule of law in that town, principles Billy has a long history of not only ignoring, but actively attacking by targeting those who support them in any form.

By attacking the system itself, obviously Billy hopes to persuade enough people to reverse the decision vis-a-vis Jacob, or simply kill Jacob outright for him, or let him do it himself.

What tends to happen instead is that the system responds to defend itself, treating Billy as the invading force.

And under that sort of stress, it is even less able to make calm, rational decisions that might help to reverse previous immoral decisions -- decisions that can reflect a "higher morality", beyond the localized self-interest any body, or system, has in protecting itself.

Which is why, in my experience, one of the best ways to correct an injustice is to calmly stand back and let that injustice be the sole mountain peak on the horizon. Whereas trying to create all sorts of new injustices might help illustrate, for some, how bad things might get if we keep going down that road, it confuses the picture greatly, to the point where many people won't be able to identify the original injustice. (Hence my decision to not "protest" the public's handling of the Clinton debacle by engaging in oral sex with women half my age and then lying about it. See, we all must make sacrifices for our beliefs! ;-)

In practice, this takes the form of today's reality: despite all the hoopla regarding the need for a Palestinian state, Arab nations have not exactly lined up to create one out of their own vast tracts of land, to my knowledge. Oh, they're happy to push for someone else (especially Israel) to do it -- but it seems to me the world would be better off, assuming Palestinians could self-constitute a law-abiding, law-respecting state (a doubtful proposition at this time), if they could do so in a place where there is, at present, no such thing. No need to replace parts of Israel to do that; dispense with the "Palestinian problem" by relocation, assuming that's even possible, and Israel, as far as I can tell, makes a reasonable fine nation-state, from the perspective of fellow nation-states, the UN, and so on.

Now, the same solution could be suggested vis-a-vis Israel -- move them wholesale to some similarly-sized place not generally acquainted with the rule of law (Hollywood? ;-) -- and that might be the easier of the two to accomplish. But it seems to me that the end result would be that the Middle East would become less, not more, generally respectful of that rule of law, and, as ecologists will tell you, it's crucial to have trees and bushes, not just grasses, holding up a hillside, lest it be swiftly eroded downhill, which might explain the original decision, still supported in practice, to place Israel where it seemed most needed at the time, not just because that particular place was sacred. Perhaps the best solution of all would be to relocate both communities and make the sacred regions into some kind of UN-governed area, allowing all three major religions safe access to Jerusalem, etc. Well, this is getting pretty far afield, and I'm certainly not qualified to even suggest any of these in reality; this is just for the purposes of discussion of the pertinent moral issues.

No, the analogy was from an objective viewpoint, illustrating the distinctions between how people view reality and reality itself.

Once I got done with it, yes.

Baloney -- it was a perfectly-useful hypothetical situation designed to test your stated hypothesis of moral equivalence, but you couldn't resist twisting it to suit your own political ends.

You see, when you said in the other post...

(Note how cleverly this Tina supporter words it: the dead ones were "involved" because Marsha "burst in" and were merely "near Billy", not because Billy burst in, took hostages, and killed a few. This sort of willfully-manipulative rhetoric is a classic means by which Tina and her supporters convince many of the moral equivalence of good and evil.)

... you weren't pointing out some horrible flaw in my analogy, or the "classc means" of Tina... I was demonstrating events as seen by those bystanders.

No, you were deliberately distorting the hypothetical situation to suit your politics rather than focus on the fact that it would expose, as fallacious, your original moral-equivalency argument.

I caught you at it, so you chose to spin it your way. If you'd wanted to simply and honestly demonstrate it, you'd have worded it that way: "though Marsha risked life and limb to save lives by killing Billy, the fact that she accidentally killed two innocent children was treated by many townsfolk as if she was entirely culpable for the deaths -- as if Billy bursting in earlier and taking them hostage, murdering some of them himself, had little or nothing to do with it".

Instead, you wrote this:

"They buried their friends, who hadn't been involved at all except to be near Billy when Marsha burst in."

That's as clear a statement of objective fact as can be made in this context.

You see, the third person perspective does not need be objective. In literature, it rarely is. And honestly, you must take into account subjective point of view to have any hope of analyzing this situation. You use events as you see them to make moral judgements and practical evaluations. Others do the same. To discuss moral issues without perspective, to pretend to be able to discuss them "objectively", is to accept that one's own view is the only one worthy of judging. You yourself have judged events based solely on your own experience, but called it "objective". By seeing how someone else experienced something, and trying to understand it, you expand your possible viewpoints to include another view.

All of which I've done, throughout my posts, explaining how different parties view things, though, of course, as the author of the hypothetical case, designed solely to offer you a means to explain or justify your moral-equivalency argument, I have the "divine capability", within that hypothesis, of stating what is, in fact, objective reality.

If you don't permit me to do that with regard to my own hypothesis, then surely you can't claim any capability of assessing anything "objective", regarding this reality or any other, unless you believe yourself (as I'm almost convinced you do) of having a Divine Ability to Know Truth that has been denied me.

So, having denied me the right to outline the objective reality of my own hypothetical situation, you've denied yourself any credibility to do pretty much everything you've done to date in this thread: claim objective knowledge and/or understanding, either directly or indirectly via your objective measures, and viciously insult those who (like me) disagree with, or find themselves not in possession of, similar knowledge and/or understanding.

This is not the path to objectivity (which is still impossible -- you cannot escape subjectivity, no more than you can escape the perception of self), it is the path to having more than one subjective viewpoint from which to judge things. I believe that having more viewpoints is always good, and I also believe that you can understand another viewpoint and find it valid without agreeing with it (which doesn't seem to be a commonly held belief). So yes, I included a stilted viewpoint that is as those people see it. The purpose was to show how their viewpoint on Marsha's actions leads to similar decisions on their part as did the townsfolk's viewpoint on Billy's actions.

Yet it was your choice to torture an otherwise perfectly-valid hypothesis, rather than straightforwardly respond to it, or simply decline to, or honestly offer to extend it for everyone's benefit in an open way. Your failure to do so speaks volumes regarding your own intellectual honesty (or lack thereof). And it's pretty consistent with how many in the media choose to write about corresponding events, even when they are claiming to write objectively, so I hardly consider you unique. It's just amazing to see such a clear, shining example of this tendency in a forum where it becomes a part of the public record and cannot be denied for what it is (since it was a hypothetical story of my own making, and you basically copped to what you did).

Further, whatever you say you believe, you simply do not consistently practice it. You've slammed me left and right throughout this thread, spewing at me about how I'm an "idiot", resorting to guilt-by-association (bringing up names like Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh), intellectually bullying me while falsely accusing me of having been a bully, and so on. Hardly the tactics of someone convinced they possess superior knowledge, understanding, etc., as you have demonstrated you are with such ferocity.

So much for your claim "I believe that having more viewpoints is always good", when, in fact, you believe that trashing any viewpoint that substantively questions your own as well as publically trashing its author is at least sometimes preferable to simply accepting it as potentially valid. (If your actions are consistent with your claimed beliefs, exactly what do these beliefs mean, in practice?)

Basically, you've conducted yourself in an intellectually fraudulent fashion in this thread.

Now, given your behavior, and your seeming inability to maintain any sort of straightforward, coherent position on several challenging issues, I claim this is not so much a moral failure on your part regarding others, but an internal problem regarding how you actually think about things -- a failure that can't help manifesting itself when you undertake discussions regarding the moral failings of others. And hardly a unique failing; perhaps the only thing pertinently unique about you is your willingness to expose these confusions in a forum like /., and try to maintain, clarify, or justify them in the face of opposition.

Clearly you think very highly of your own brain-power, and very little of my own. Yet, you've proven quite incapable of: practicing your own beliefs regarding accepting other viewpoints; of tolerating dissent; of calmly and rationally discussing politically challenging subjects; of honestly presenting facts; of being capable of assessing the character of others (calling me a "bully"); and of even following through on your own "promises" to end the discussion.

(E.g. I notice in another post you claimed 100 Palestinian men, women, and children are killed by Israel for every one Israeli soldier that is killed, which is a flat-out lie, not even close to the truth. But, then, you've established that objective truth is either nonexistent or impossible for you to pursue, and in any case that you're quite willing to state things, as truth, that you know, in fact, are not the truth, to, only later, when you're called out about it, basically claim "oh, there's a good reason why I lied".)

So, my speculation, or educated guess, is that you aren't so much a willful liar, dissembler, confuser of fact, confounder of morality, and so on, as a personally very confused person, overloaded with book-learnin' and philosophy and crap like that, compared to actual life-experiences that temper, in most people, the belief that one knows all that one needs to know about a topic to render Final Judgement on people and governments.

And, you've chosen to read literature written by, and perhaps surround yourself with, people who believe the sort of conduct you now engage in constitutes valid, useful, intellectual discussion. Perhaps you've enjoyed (or feared?) seeing someone's intellect slammed in the past, so you act it out on me, as you did earlier. Perhaps you've been suckered into a moral discussion, only to find someone "set you up" by pretending to say one thing and then reinterpreting the language later to mean something else, then depicting you as a fool for falling for it, so you try the tactic out on me (and everyone else here as well).

Rather than stand up for a straightforward moral character and, at least within yourself, rebuke these things as immoral, you have chosen to try them out for yourself. And you're finding out they don't work quite as well when somebody does stand up to them, point them out, refuse to back down from legitimate, honest points, and so on, and that appears to have left you somewhat flummoxed.

In a sense, your brain is, in personal-computing terms, a 4-processor Intel Pentium IV running at 1.2GHz with 4GB of RAM -- that is, tremendously powerful hardware.

The problem is, you have so many different "systems", or rule bases, that you try to run all at once. In essence, you boot up Windows when you want to imply that you have the One True Concept of what is Good and Right and True; then you shut it down and boot up GNU/Linux when you want to suggest that Any Approach Is Valid, to escape responsibility when you're actually caught misrepresenting the truth, fumbling logic, or failing to obey your own self-professed precepts for living. Then you boot up OpenBSD when you want to hide, or secure yourself, from any criticism of the tactics you've used while running the other systems.

And you have so many tactics you want to try to "win" that you're running bloated software most of the time, so your CPUs are busy thinking through all sorts of different tactics, wondering "will this help me win the debate", comparing potential outcomes, and so on, leaving little CPU time and memory for actually focusing on what is True, what is Right, and how best to bring it out.

Meanwhile, lowly little me, I'm running a single-processor Pentium II at 233MHz, but, rather than constantly boot up and shut down different OSes, each with tons of bloat, legacy baggage, and the lot, I just run BeOS all the time (I pick that OS only for its reputation for being lean, mean, and speedy, for illustrative purposes).

So, while you resort to all sorts of tactics of rhetoric to try to "defeat" me in a debate -- trashing me, lying about the record, constantly introducing new misinformation or half-information rather than dealing with the facts already on the table, using guilt-by-association, and so on -- all I do is chug along, focus on what I know to be true (admittedly very little), stay humble about the rest, and stand up for only those things that I think really matter, like resisting tyranny in all its forms, as well as not standing idly by every time some person or organization that resists tyranny is trashed (lest it give up protecting me or others, for one thing).

The upshot is that, IMO, you've embarrassed yourself throughout this discussion, by behaving like a confused, scrambled, self-absorbed, arrogant pseudo-intellectual, so impressed by his own rhetorical capabilities that he can't think straight, can't answer simple questions with simple answers, and can't treat his fellow man in a loving way that even remotely patterns how he pretends to judge governments on a moral basis.

Now, I never intended to "convert" you to my way of thinking, score debating points, etc.

But I believe I've accomplished the nearly-complete elimination, in a public forum, via your own writings, of any moral or intellectual authority you might have ever had that went into your moral-equivalency argument. Anyone who might previously had thought "wow, that Chris Burke guy sure seems to know his stuff, and he has serious reservations about American morality" need only read this thread to see how seriously you actually take the issue of morality in your own life, how honest and straightforward you are (or aren't), how willing you are (or aren't) to be up-front about your agenda (compared to what you claim about the importance of it when it comes to life-and-death issues like Iran/Contra), and so on.

So, go ahead, make all the claims you want about the "moral equivalence" of Al Queda and the USA. It won't matter anymore, since anyone can see that you don't even believe you can assess any "objective reality" that permits such a precise judgement; that you can't (or won't) propose and maintain, against questioning even from a "simpleton" like myself, a coherent moral code; that you refuse to follow even the simplest threads (or tatters) of your own moral code; that you make wildly incorrect claims about the past moral character of individuals like myself (calling me a "bully", something most of my classmates in school would find hilarious); and that, having failed to claim victory, admit defeat, or politely withdraw, you can't even be relied upon to honor your own commitment to "get out of the game".

(Not that I mind the continued debate or the other stuff. You haven't offended me at all; in fact, I appreciate the opportunity to stand up for what's Good and Right and Decent about America, while taking a few of my own "shots" at what I see as having been moral mistakes. ;-)

I mean, just as one little example: if you can be so completely wrong about "predicting" that I was a bully in school, how can you possibly believe your assessment of the morality of a country like the USA has any useful degree of precision or accuracy?

That being said, as you continue to post, you say lots of things that suggest to me that at least part of you is a sincere seeker for Truth, someone genuinely interested in carrying on an intelligent, calm, sincere, yet vibrant, discussion about sociopolitical issues that could involve life-and-death issues, so I'm not about to toss you off, as I would probably have in the past, like an annoying insect. Whatever is good about you -- and I'm assured by God that there is much of that -- is worth preserving, cherishing, loving, comforting, so I'll continue to offer what, of that, I can in this forum.

Further, if one of your goals was, or has become, to rebuke the notion that anything the US government does must be "right" simply because it is "morally superior" compared to its enemy, then I believe your continued posting has helped win that point. And I support that rebuke: past behavior might suggest a general moral stance, but is no guarantee of moral correctness in any given instance in the past or the future. Even wildly patriotic Americans who froth at the mouth at your moral-equivalency argument, however you've presented it, should take this away from this debate: they cannot ever assume that their moral guidance is unneeded by those leading the US government at the time, because the US government derives its entire morality from the people -- American citizens -- that make it up. (Sounds trite, but turning off, or squelching, moral concerns under stress is a typical response, one you alluded to earlier, and which could be deadly in this and future conflicts.)

And that moral guidance can be expressed in a variety of ways, from conversations with friends, to letters to editors, to voting, to running for office, none of which necessarily require a direct assault on the rule of law -- a "privilege" denied so many in other governments and groups (Al Queda, for one), therefore one that should be vigorously exercised in this day and age to ensure it isn't lost forever.

How serious can your response truly be, when you don't answer straightforward questions,like, did my original analogy, with a morally neutral backstory, suggest to you Marsha was morally equivalent, in her actions, to Billy?

Perhaps because that is a ridiculous question.

No, because you answer it below. And you wouldn't answer it then, because you needed the opportunity to greatly modify and extend your original thesis by dredging up tons of past evil the US has done, without offering any counterweights to that.

It seems to me that, whether you believe it or not, you hate the USA, and your modifications to its role in the Marsha/Billy story -- in which the townsfolk murder Marsha, who represented (by your choice) the USA, to "reward" her for finally dealing with Billy -- show how deeply you desire the ultimate destruction of the USA, or at least how preoccupied you are with that likely outcome (and presently unwilling to use your great intellectual and rhetoric to prevent such an outcome).

Now, I wasn't sure that was the case at first, so I gave you a full iteration to re-think how you wanted the story to end, without making it too easy.

So, here is my take, FWIW: you chose to have townsfolk, who never raised a finger against a known criminal anytime during his crime spree, and left it up to a plainly-reformed strongman, Marsha, to deal with him, go ahead and murder Marsha by collective action, despite the fact that Marsha no longer posed any real threat to the town, especially compared to Billy, especially given that she'd already made huge personal sacrifices to ensure the town's safety, and Billy was now gone.

You're happy (in the only sense I suppose you can be happy in your present state of mind) with that outcome. You meant it to be an ominous signal to me, or others, who refused to join in or blindly accept your hateful pronouncements against the USA, but it failed utterly, because those of us who appreciate the good things the US does in protecting individual freedom and rights around the world already understand (especially since 2001-09-11) how little the rest of the world actually values it (beyond lip-service when it's politically appropriate).

You can claim "I actually like America" all you like. Based on this thread, it's pretty clear that such a claim is the product of a very confused, self-contradictory mind, if not simply an all-out lie designed to lull readers into believing they're going to read anything approaching "the truth about America" from someone who say they "care" about America. (Hey, Al Queda "cares" about America to, and wants only "what's right" for it. I think most people can rationally and legitimately interpret that, too, as "hatred".)

Your story was about as "morally neutral" as the Brother's Grimm are neutral on the subject of gender roles.

I never said it was "morally neutral". I said, please respond to it as if it had a morally neutral backstory. Surely you can understand that term "backstory", since you used it yourself to introduce, well, your backstory! (Which you purposely rigged, in moral terms, to validate a "morally-equivalent" conclusion at the end of the story.)

Obviously, that doesn't mean Marsha was incapable of past misdeeds, or that everyone sprang from nonexistence immediately, just that you could have taken as a given that, whatever they did in the past, you would specifically not assume there was any overall "moral imbalance" as of the story's beginning in my narration.

Surely, since you're such a self-professed expert when it comes to assessing "moral equivalence" between a nation-state of some 250 million people with 250 or so years of history (the US) and a far-flung, though small, band of committed extremists drawing on 1700 years of religious tradition (Al Queda), you couldn't have found it at all difficult to simply start with a blank slate, look at a hypothetical situation, and say "yea", "nay", or "not enough info".

You stilted it as much as you could, or at least that's what you would have been doing if you weren't presenting what you see as "reality". I didn't answer the question, because the answer is meaningless. I ignore things that aren't worth responding too, no matter how important you think they are. I normally don't answer meaningless questions. Yet I will, and the answer would be "no, they were not morally equivalent".

I didn't stilt it, I wrote it, and the more stilted you claim it was, the easier it should have been to answer without so much nonsense. That's the purpose of that sort of hypothetical situation: to help us clarify what might seem to be straightforward statements regarding, e.g., morality, in situations that might be more or less emotionally laden, confusing, etc.

And, after all these posts, you finally answer it IMO correctly: no, Marsha isn't as immoral as Billy, even though she accidentally killed two innocent children while killing Billy, an action she undertook because she had plenty of evidence to believe that he would, if not stopped by her, murder many more. And even though she knew she would be risking the deaths of innocents, as well as herself, by her actions.

Which completely contradicts what you originally posted in this thread, taken as you wrote it, without having all sorts of backstory you later decided to patch in, but didn't have the intellectual honesty to admit you simply failed to present in the first place, even to say "because of this, and because of all the naughty things the US did in the past, I claim it is just as immoral as Al Queda".

And if that was just an oversight, you could have responded to the howls of protest from people like myself by simply saying "oh, hey, I meant: given all the evil and good the USA has done in the past, compared to that of Al Queda, plus this war effort, make them morally equivalent", and leaving it at that.

(Sure, people might have concluded you think the USA is more in need of being wiped off the face of the earth than Al Queda. I think you actually understood, at some level, that that would be the likely conclusion from the beginning, and purposely obfuscated your statements when you made them, afterwards, or both, to try to a) indict the USA somewhat without b) indicting your own moral judgement. I've seen that tactic used too often to be easily fooled by it.)

Now, getting back to one of my earlier points with regard to the story: assuming you believe that it was therefore immoral for the townsfolk to give Billy moral credibility equivalent to Marsha, and ultimately murder Marsha; and that you might well have been one of the townsfolk willing and able to speak out shortly after Marsha's finally disposing of Billy in the narrative, yet knowing what is a likely outcome; what should you, as one of those townsfolk, do to bring about a more moral outcome?

IMO, if you do what you've done in this thread, you're doing something immoral, or at least amoral, to wit: knowing that the townsfolk are likely someday to murder Marsha because she finally kills Billy less-than-perfectly to defend herself and the town from Billy's crime spree (in which her own friends and relatives had been murdered by him), you nevertheless choose to preach the moral equivalency of Marsha and Billy.

The effect of that preaching does nothing to encourage the townsfolk to be more alert in the future in defending against people like Billy.

But Marsha, and especially her defenders, more of the sort of mind-set that listens to feedback, end up being discouraged, while those who seek the opportunity to murder Marsha end up being encouraged, by your preaching.

See, in a strict sense, Marsha might be strong, but her strength had long included a substantial component of moral legitimacy. You know that, which is why you seek to attack it -- to delegitimize her in the eyes of as many townsfolk as possible. Else why would you, or anyone, bother to question someone's moral legitimacy?

That way, you can help bring about the conditions whereby townsfolk who would otherwise defend her remain quiet, perhaps some of them start saying "Marsha must be destroyed", and a few of them find little resistance carrying out their plan to murder her.

Instead, you could preach an argument of "moral superiority" -- that, imperfect as she may be, Marsha nevertheless fights for a morally superior vision of how the townsfolk could and should live, free of being robbed, beaten, raped, enslaved, murdered, and so on -- even though, to survive personally, which sometimes includes protecting her best supporters, she occasionally trespasses on these rights in specific instances.

If your preaching wasn't in vain, you might help convince more townsfolk to protect her (while perhaps keeping her "in line" by offering to help resolve situations brought to her attention); more to speak up for her, even if in simplistic, aka patriotic, ways ("Marsha Is Great, Yay For Marsha!"); and, ultimately, fewer, maybe none, willing to carry out a plan to murder her, if only because of the risk that they might fail and/or be killed themselves by defenders of Marsha.

And, if you preached early enough in the narrative, you might actually help bring about the prevention of the worst of Billy's crime spree, if not his outright rehabilitation, by encouraging townsfolk to emulate the qualities they find themselves openly admiring in Marsha -- of protecting the innocent, standing against crime and tyranny, etc. (And, in a sense, that's where we are now in the narrative; the USA hasn't been hurt by 09-11 as much as Marsha was by killing relatives, and militant Islam's crime spree is still in the pinprick stage, kinda like Billy's theft and occasional rape.)

So, in preaching the moral equivalency of the USA and Al Queda, you are, in my opinion, making a clear moral choice regarding the outcome you yourself seem to wish upon "Marsha" -- the USA -- namely, its ultimate destruction as a reward for its zealously defending the rights of everyone by destroying those who have proven their willingness to commit mass-murder.

I stand by my strong opinion that such preaching is a case of moral idiocy, especially now that it's been revealed how insightful you're capable of being regarding the way events might well unfold.

And that's consistent with what you said very earlier on with being bitter, cynical, not thinking clearly, whatever -- you're so focused on the Marsha/USA evil you know, going back centuries, that you find yourself unwilling to rouse your moral consciousness, explore the issues more deeply, and figure out what you can do to make the world a better place.

In another post, you said:

First, how about you answer the question based solely on the analogy, assuming a morally neutral backstory, without having to "decorate" in ways you didn't bother to mention in your posts morally equating the US with al Queda?

Ah, I see your issue now. When I posted without decoration or backstory, I didn't bother to mention it not because it is irrelevant, but because I assumed that since all the decorations are part of the public record, I didn't have to. Because intent is what matters, the backstory is critically important. It is by viewing one's actions over time that you can begin to determine intent. There is no better way to predict what someone would do in a certain situation than to study what they have done in previous situations. The past is the only guide we have to the future. Thus for the question of intent, the why not the what, we cannot ignore the backstory.

Sorry, that's a nearly-complete rewrite of what you actually said:

"I think the intent is the same. Our goals are more important than their deaths. Which means, that if what you say is true -- intent matters -- the only difference between the US government and terrorists is that the goverment has a bigger budget."

There it is: you claimed the intent was the same, i.e. the backstory can itself be canceled out (i.e. it doesn't affect, on balance, the subsequent equation). The subsequent equation: if intent matters, the only difference is budget -- not morality. Moral equivalence thus asserted.

(Then you went on to steer my hypothetical story "toward reality", a reality you later claim is impossible to determine objectively....)

In case you're going to try to wiggle out of the morality claim above, here's what you wrote earlier in that same post:

"Indeed, intent matters. But my observation is that our cavalier attitude toward killing civilians ("collateral damage") makes our intent not so much different from theirs. It is exactly the point that treating civilian casualties as "regrettable but unavoidable" in the pursuit of our goals makes us as culpable as them for those civilians we kill."

We're as culpable as them for the civilians we kill by accident as they are for the ones they murder on purpose. That's a simple, direct statement of moral equivalence, plainly requiring no backstory, plainly assuming none. Can a lead-in like "It is exactly the point..." be made more clear in that direction?

(How in the world Marsha avoids identical culpability to Billy in the story, based on that statement, is beyond me, since the starting-point of the stories -- moral neutrality -- is the same. "I think the intent is the same" is an acceptance of a starting-point of moral neutrality, given the other constraints at that point in the discussion, is it not?)

As far as what's in the "public record", you've clearly seen fit to dredge up all sorts of negative evidence with regards to the USA (as you did with Marsha in the story), but how many instances can you point to where you presented positive evidence in her behalf, or negative evidence for the other side -- Al Queda/Billy?

(I can't think of any such instances offhand, but you may have said something nice about the USA once or twice.)

Based on what you chose to say about the USA and Al Queda, respectively, it's pretty clear which one you hate more, which one is more morally repugnant to you, and so on: the USA.

(If you did all that just to justify your moral-equivalency argument, you sure have a skewed set of priorities, publically trashing a country you claim to "like" just to avoid having to admit you might have been wrong, speaking out of your butt, whatever.)

If, on the other hand, you were trying to present an open, honest assessment of the relative morality of the USA and Al Queda, surely you would have identified all sorts of things positive and negative about both in their history? (And don't say "it's in the public record, which I assumed everyone knew" -- that justified either saying nothing about that record, or presenting all sides fairly. My claim is that you did neither, though, because of your hatred of the USA, you perhaps believed you were being fair at the time.)

Which I hope explains why your analogy was not worth it to me to consider seriously, as it stood.

No, it doesn't, since you have proven you could have easily addressed it as it stood, simply by doing so above.

Now, it occurs to me that perhaps you avoided doing so because you didn't want me to turn around and say "aha, that means the USA is not as bad as Al Queda", without your already having prepared the way to rebut such a claim.

First, I wouldn't have made that claim, something you'll just have to trust. What I was trying to rebut was your plain statement of an equation, which did not appear to require any context to have some validity, despite what you now claim.

(I might have said, "okay, just what is it that the USA is doing that makes it more morally repugnant in this equation, such that it ends up being equal to Al Queda?", or just stopped contributing entirely, having made my point.)

Second, even if I, or someone else, had made the claim, you could have then countered, explaining your belief that the USA has done vastly more evil than good compared to Al Queda, and so on.

But, especially consistent with published practices of left-wing manipulation of truth, you chose to distort, duck and cover, distort, duck and cover, proving a lack of honesty and faithfulness -- two qualities that I, personally, consider necessary for anyone to convince me they have the authority to pronounce moral equivalence as you have done.

Now, with this understanding, let me explain my position. First, anytime I say "we", or "the US", I'm referring specifically to the government.

I.e. its system of governance combined with its citizens, especially in the case of the USA, which is government by, for, and of the people, moreso than in most any other nation.

In my (admittedly non-exhaustive, but also self-directed and not driven solely by popular conception or word of mouth) study of our own actions during and since WWII, I have concluded that our intent is to protect our own interests, both political and economic, by any means necessary.

Exactly like any other nation's government that proves able to survive a dangerous world.

And note that, strictly speaking, "by any means necessary" differs in several practical ways from "by any means convenient", though sometimes the USA seems to practice the latter. (E.g. our agreement on the bombing of the plant in Sudan, my opinion about the Elian Gonzalez raid; how these were necessary, I fail to see, but can see how they may well have been convenient for the leaders in power at the time.)

By the way, sometimes I think you get too hung up on linguistics. If John says "I'm gonna have sex tonight by any means necessary" and Fred says "I'm gonna murder my wife tonight by any means necessary", you talk as if they're morally equivalent, since, somehow, in your view, their intent, goals, and conduct are the same. When someone points out that all John did was to hire a prostitute, while Fred cut his wife's throat, you respond "well, that's because John was easily able to just hire a prostitute; Fred's goals required him to do what he did, and I'm sure that if John was in Fred's position, he would have done the same -- therefore, they're morally equivalent".

The mere fact that they use the same language does not mean they're after the same thing. And the mere fact that you can describe their conduct using similar language does not mean they're engaging in morally equivalent conduct.

(At this point, I suppose you'll explain to me that the reason John wants only to have sex instead of murder his wife is that he murdered his girlfriend years earlier, therefore he is, indeed, "morally equivalent" to Fred.)

These "means" are restrained by political reality, public reaction to the means (if they are discovered), and our capabilities.

Exactly, which includes a very high component of morality (positive and negative), which a large percentage of the citizenry believe is critical to not only be close to God, but to be safe in the world, as well as a substantial component of morality in the form of the degree to which citizen participation in government is encouraged compared to the extremes of tyrannical leadership and that form of "mob rule" that might be called "raw democracy".

(You've apparently decided to never get back to me on the crucial issue of whether moral superiority implies an improved ability to survive or flourish in this world, after having ridiculed me for suggesting it might, when it comes to how nations govern their citizens. I think that's a pretty important issue, though I'm not near 100% convinced that it is the case. So I'd love to know what you think about those issues, in simplified form at least, as in my examples of Moses, Jesus, and so on.)

Nothing else obvious comes to mind. Not an abiding sense of "goodness", to be sure.

How in the world can a government have an "abiding sense of goodness", once you remove people from the equation (which is what you appear to have done by relegating them to "political reality" and "public reaction", which you treat as distinct from the government)?

Do you really believe any system, aside from the human beings that might inhabit it, has any "sense of good", or of anything else, for that matter?

Methinks you've been looking in the wrong place for an "abiding sense of goodness".

I suggest you look in the hearts of people first, starting with yourself: find the goodness you've think you believe in, focus exclusively on that for a time (an hour, day, week, month, whatever you can manage), and bring it out in your dealings with others (including fellow /. posters).

Then see how well it works, learn from it, rinse, and repeat.

As you get more "centered" in your own morality, you expand it to include others -- teaching, preaching, and, on rare occasion, judging those who come within your circle and whom you are expected to judge.

Continue to observe the effects your activities have on others, positive and negative, and on yourself of course, and modify your behavior, and morality, accordingly.

Until you've done that, you have neither the moral experience or moral authority to assess, much less preach regarding, the relative morality of nation-states, governments, corporations, or even Boy Scout troups.

[To Be Continued...]

And a particular system of governance might do better or worse, along various dimensions, when it comes to amplifying good and squelching evil, but, ultimately, 100% good people can overcome any bad system, just as 100% bad people can destroy any good system, acting from within or without -- though, in practice, if there are such things as people 100% good or bad, they are too few in number to ever conduct an experiment in these directions, so we must satisfy ourselves with vast areas of gray.

mars?

[TheQuantumShift]

I think we need to go back to the moon and set up some bases, to better prepare us for mars, and to shut up those idiots who think nasa is in the business of special effects and sound stages. Or maybe turn the ISS into something useful, like a launch pad for some really cool ships or something. Mars would be cool and all, but not with current technology, where it takes months just for a probe to get there and malfunction. And we need some more time to get off our asses and join the rest of the world in the metric system for christ's sake!

Re:mars?

[Winged Cat]

1. Reduce cost to get stuff into space. $10k/lb. to LEO makes everything else too expensive. $100/lb. is apparently achievable even before you get many users (and being reached for by many private efforts today).
   
2. Set up some industry in orbit, or on the Moon, to pay for this. Space tourism, mining, automated construction (of solar power satellites, telescopes, and whatever else people will pay you to build up there)...even with what little we know, there are already potentials for business. More opportunities will likely pop up in the course of setting these up, but the venture capitalists want established opportunities - and those do exist.
   
3. Set up manned habitation. There are people who will gladly pay to, within limits, be research subjects for the long-term effects of space on the average (non-elite-astronaut) human body, especially if you use the results to build things that minimize these effects (for instance, start out with spin-induced artificial gravity for most of the habitat); if you add more devices later, you can then ask for more people to "test" the improvements. Eventually, expand this habitat to be self-sufficient.
   
4. ...and there's your humanity in space. Sit back, and let the distributed (if limited in certain ways) intelligence of the masses work its magic.
   

Re:mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

The US *did* join the Metric System, several hundred years ago. Pity the states have a tendancy to ignore Washington and go their own way.....

Re:mars?

[yintercept]

> With all the cool graphics programs and special effects software on the market...I think NASA should redo all those old smoke and mirror movies they made in the 70s that convinced everyone that the earth was round and that we could go to the moon... A good fx job would keep up the big lie and revive the industrial military complex in the recession. ...sorry couldn't resist that one...

Re:mars?

[RelliK]

I think we need to go back to the moon and set up some bases, to better prepare us for mars, and to shut up those idiots who think nasa is in the business of special effects and sound stages.

Huh? What's the point? If they didn't believe it the first time, why would they believe it the second time?

Re:mars?

[kubrick]

to shut up those idiots who think nasa is in the business of special effects and sound stages

Huh? What's the point? If they didn't believe it the first time, why would they believe it the second time?

Throw 'em out the airlock -- that'll teach 'em!

Re:mars?

[TheQuantumShift]

Because now we can have them witness. Live satalite TV feeds. Today we can offer much, much more proof of an event than in 1969, and today also happens to not be 30 years in the past. I don't really care if theyt believe or not, the main focus is getting the public behind it through education. I'd rather not have to resort to "Bin Laden's hiding in a cave on the dark side of the moon! Quick! Fund us now, or the evil will spread to your childeren!" I know it worked throughout the eighties using communism as the scapegoat, but I'd rather think we actually are in the 21st century here...

Re:mars?

[Martin S.]

shut up those idiots who think nasa is in the business of special effects and sound stages.

Some people are still absolutely certain the earth is flat (http://www.flat-earth.org/).

So if some fools cannot be convinced after nearly 400 years of science evidence to the contary, what hope is there that those moron's(http://www.apfn.org/apfn/moon.htm) will ever accept it even when they can make the observations, themselves (http://www.discovery.com/stories/science/entrepre neurs/tourist.html).

It a pity Natural Selection seems to reward stupidity (The Bell Curve) and not punish it (http://www.darwinawards.com/).

Defense is the only justification

[Anonymous Coward]

At times of war, such as now, we have to be the best and on our toes. The enemy and the evil that lives in the middle east are devious and cunning. They have no regard for human lives (as we sadly remember from a few months back), they are not human and they advocate religions of pure violence.

We have to evolve beyond these animals and make ourselves the cream of human achievement.

It is true, in times of peace, space exploration is a must for evolving oursevles. But, the time for explorations is not now, we are at war, we need to defend oursevles, we need to route the money we spend into things that would help save our neighbors.

There are evil nations in the middle east and asia, that are bent on the destruction of our culture and society. We as a race that is proud to call oursevles the forerunners and the most virtus of all humanity, need to defend the core basis of our existance. And in so doing, we need to wipe this evil from earth.

Nuclear space expoloration is also one good thing we are doing. Nuclear research is one good thing. Because this would cut our dependencies with the facist Mohammedian regimes in the middle east that stole our oil wells in middle of last century and are exorting high prices for the energy we run our cars in.

We need to look for alternative forms of energy for our survival. We need to cut our bonds with the rest of the shits out there. We need nuclear, we need defense. We need to look after each and everyone of us Americans.

God bless america

Re:Defense is the only justification

[Shao Ke]

God I hope he wrote this with sarcasm=1, otherwise this guy is a racist freak.
This sounds like Nazi trash.
It's not like our government (USA) doesn't go stir the pot of hate every now and then.
Please be kidding!

Re:Defense is the only justification

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a scarastic troll, writes about this all the time. If you look at the words he uses "Mohammedism... etc", you'd note they were only used 30-50 years ago (During the lameness we had back then). It's a very interesting troll, I've seen his other postings, it does open eyes. We do see what we support.

Re:Defense is the only justification

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, given that he used the exect wordings that Bush used during his Union address, who would you think is a bigger racist?

Well, we still deny we killed 500 innocent people in South Korea, and we'd probably deny we killed 6000 in Afganistan. Ofcourse it's collateral damage (Same reason McVeigh gave).

And if you think a self virtious government that goes around alientating some of its citizens by claiming they are from an evil nation is not nazi like or truely a saint, I'm sadly disapointed.

Re:Defense is the only justification

[Anonymous Coward]

As an objectivist and Libertarian, I have to agree with every point you made.

Religion is the cause of all evil. If we can wipe and remove the institutions of religion from our socities, then we would have a more peaceful planet.

On the oil well, being an objectivist once again, and a captalist, I do agree with the idea of finding alternative plans for our survival. The stealing of oil wells is just so classical (See Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged).

We (Americans and the western nations), spent billions of dollars in research and drilling those oil wells and out comes this nation and nationalizies wells owned by our corporations. This is a sad case and most injust. It was our research, it was our money, all of which has now been raped out of us.

And to add insult to this, we are being charged, even when there is a surplus on world oil production the Arabs are charging us billions more than necessary for our oil. That oil belongs to us, it is rightfully ours.

As you said, we need to develop alternative research to cut our bounds with these extortionists, we need to develop nuclear power (something that's cheap and safe).

Our nation is probably the greatest nation to have every been on Earth, it's surpased Rome during the 50's and we are the only becon of hope for other western nations.

I propose, we go our individual ways, withdraw from those pitty struggles in underdeveloped nations, and focus only on our strenths and desires to be the best. Since we are the best.

Sherry McLintel.

Re:Defense is the only justification

[Anonymous Coward]

Um! Isn't this on topic? I mean, one of the slashbascks is discussing this. Probably modded down due to political reasons? Hehe!

Gigabit Lag

[Renraku]

From what I hear, DSL providers are mostly gaining very little profit per customer. Most of the fee is used for bandwidth, facilities, what have you. Now either astronomical fees will have to be charged for the bandwidth needed, or one person is going to have gigabit speeds while everyone else gets to lag and be slow, and fight each other over who gets the extra .01k of bandwidth.

Planetary Society Poll on NASA

[ec_hack]

Where NASA was asking for our opinion on where to go in space? Well, the results are in. Lo and behold, we all want to go to Mars.

The poll, alas, was only about robotic exploration priorities. The Planetary Society is dedicated to promoting robotic exploration off the planet and is mildly biased against such projects as the ISS and human exploration of Mars and the Moon. To support human exploration, join the National Space Society.

Note: I support the use of robots as precursors to sending the scientists and colonists. Both programs have merit, and provide me with a paycheck in the private sector.

Re:Planetary Society Poll on NASA

[proxima]

The Planetary Society is dedicated to promoting robotic exploration off the planet and is mildly biased against such projects as the ISS and human exploration of Mars and the Moon.

Wrong.

Check out this page.

Since its inception, the Planetary Society has advocated the exploration of Mars?with the ultimate goal of sending humans to the Red Planet


The Planetary Society promotes all types of space exploration to other planets, especially Mars.

Re:Planetary Society Poll on NASA

[ec_hack]

Since its inception, the Planetary Society has advocated the exploration of Mars with the ultimate goal of sending humans to the Red Planet

Having been a member of the PS for over 10 years starting at it's founding, I can say they are engaging in some rewriting of history. They were actively against human exploration activities (including a Mars misssion) happening in our lifetimes. For a while, Sagan pushed a joint mission with the XSSR, but it was strictly a political move, based on his antipathy toward US policy with respect to the USSR under Reagan. Their opposition to human missions was one of the reasons I dropped my membership. Maybe they have changed their tune to some degree in recent years, but they were singing a different song while Sagan was alive.

Re:Planetary Society Poll on NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with the idea that The Planetary Society does not support human space exploration. In 1985, the Society circulated a petition signed by over 100 distiguished scientists and thousands of members of the public calling for a human mission to Mars. It has been a focus of the society's work ever since. While the Society's current Mars Outpost initiative calls for robotic exploration of the Red Planet, it is as a precursor to human exploration.

page lengthening post!

[Klerck]

Don't forget to add me to your foes list! Fags!

Back by unpopular demand, more random number crapflooding!

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Re:page lengthening post!

[Mayflower]

Idiot dork. Do us all a favor and put your
head an oven (it doesn't have to be your oven)
and turn on the gas. Fucking idiot.

Re:page lengthening post!

[Mayflower]

Oh, yea. Your site really sucks. Your link to giver.html ain't
go'in any where. This reinforces the head in oven conclusion of
your existance.

And if that's your eye, you should be check out for any strange
diseases. It shows indication of any number of infections that
could be either fungal or viral in nature. Of course none of
that would matter if you would only do the right thing.

Stallman and his inability to tell the truth

[Anonymous Coward]

(A modified version of GNU is used on millions of computers, but the users often are not aware of this, because the whole system is widely confused with its kernel program, whose name is "Linux.")

Yeah, sure, Dick. Whatever. Live in your own little fantasy world.

Anyone else notice that he's dropped GNU/Linux altogether? Now it's just GNU. No credit given at all to the kernel. I guess it's just not important.

...After the dollar signs fade from their eyes...

Funny, I didn't think Dick had a problem with people making money with software.

He isn't pro-Free software in the least. He is simply pro-GPL and anti-everything else.

It reminds me of Pres. Clinton when giving the speech to a group of seniors:

(paraphrase)
"Now we could give back all your money to use as you see fit."
&ltapplause&gt
"But that wouldn't be a good idea because you might squander it."
&ltboos&gt

Everything he says sounds great until he gets to the punchline. Boo, Dick, Boo.

Nice job, slashtroll!

[kaladorn]

At times of war, such as now, we have to be the best and on our toes. The enemy and the evil that lives in the middle east are devious and cunning. They have no regard for human lives (as we sadly remember from a few months back), they are not human and they advocate religions of pure violence.

I'm trying to imagine a more inflammatory beginning. It actually strains the mind to do so. Pure violence? PURE 100% VIOLENCE? They are not human? Did this philosophy come out of a crackerjack box? The thinking behind it obviously did.

And you posted as an AC because obviously either the user registration process is beyond you or you are afraid to stand up for what you (supposedly) believe. That's just lovely.

When you grow up, you can come join the rest of us who realize life isn't entirely binary (black/white, on/off, good/evil) and that how you think about other people says a lot about who you are, then come back and join the discussion. And feel free to stand up and be counted by name.

Then maybe you'll be able to contribute to the discussion in an adult fasion. There are those who actually understand that the enemies of our way of life _are_ entirely human and this is the greatest part of the tragedy. It'd be really convenient to kick them out of the species, but life don't work that way.

God, that kind of rubbish makes me ill. But I guess that makes for a great trolling, now doesn't it? I only hope you're a slashtroll, because if you aren't, you've got some serious psychological damage.

Re:Nice job, slashtroll!

[Anonymous Coward]

The quality of the work (and the fact that i've seen this posted in different ways on other stories), leads me to believe it's slashtroll. No one is this maladramatic.

But, it's been baited. Very subtile, but baitful! :)

The 1984 award goes to slashtroll or whoever that was.

Dropped "Linux" because the kernel doesn't matter

[yerricde]

Anyone else notice that he's dropped GNU/Linux altogether? Now it's just GNU. No credit given at all to the kernel. I guess it's just not important.

That's because the issues are the same, whether you run GNU/Linux, GNU/Solaris, GNU/Win32, GNU/DOS, or any other port of the GNU userland.

He isn't pro-Free software in the least. He is simply pro-GPL and anti-everything else.

He's pro-free software. He understands that BSD-class licenses (especially for noddy programs under 2 KLOC or for software used in embedded systems), weak copyleft licenses (especially for free clones of common libraries), and GPL-class strong copyleft licenses all have their place.

Re:Your sig.

[Robber Baron]

Does this imply the presence of Karma Pimps?

Yes...they're also known as moderators...

Re:Dropped "Linux" because the kernel doesn't matt

[Anonymous Coward]

I think if you took the time to read the "Why-not-LGPL" article, you'd find he's only interested in using a "weak copyleft" in order to slowly move people to the more restrictive GPL. He isn't interested in it for anything other than its ability to lull people into a false sense of security in regards to the FSF and GPL.

Re:Dropped "Linux" because the kernel doesn't matt

[s20451]

Not to belittle GNU -- but if the Kernel doesn't matter, then why is Stallman so desperate to take credit for / redirect credit away from Linux? And if the Kernel doesn't matter, then I guess HURD doesn't matter, either.

Screw you, Cyborg Monkey!

[Pr0n K1ng]

Yeah, baby. I got the mother fucking first post of goodness!

Well, while I'm at it...

[Pr0n K1ng]

I may as well take second post. Why the fuck not, heh.

africa?

[npietraniec]

I've probably got more computers in my basement than they do in the whole continent. Ok, mod me down. I thought it was funny. :P

Re:africa?

[sonicstorm]

most of us have more processing power under the hood of our machines than the entire nation of somalia, don't feel bad. :)

Can I have third?

[Eso]

Dammit... three times today I clicked on an article with no posts, and only once did I get an FP.

Ahahahahahaha! Sucker!

[Pr0n K1ng]

No!

DAMMIT SPELL

[StuffMaster]

16th post!!!!!

Seriously, WHY CAN'T THE EDITORS CHECK THE SPELLING OF POSTS??????

This is so much less signifigant than checking the validity of posts! Can't they put a spell check into slashcode (uneducated proposal)? Or something???????

"Certainly not"...

[mgkimsal2]

He runs into a big problem: not only is the latest software expensive with all manner of bewildering bells and whistles that he does not need, but it doesn't run on such an old machine. What is he to do? Would it be legal to find and use an old copy of the operating system and spreadsheet? "Certainly not", replies his software dealer, and sternly warns him of the fate that awaits users of illegal software copies.

I've got a problem with this scenario. Are we REALLY saying that if I found someone who had a LEGALLY LICENSED copy of Windows 95 from 1995, we could not engage in any sort of transaction to transfer the license (per whatever terms were stated in the Win95 original license) over to me?

Arguing that ANY transfer of license at all is 'illegal' to bolster the 'open source' frenzy strikes me as very shortsighted. It's just not necessary to make up or exaggerate the situation to make the case for open software.

Re:"Certainly not"...

[Anonymous Coward]

You smell that? Do you smell that? ...Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...

Re:"Certainly not"...

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe you'd like to learn how to form a proper HTML link before you try to teach people PHP.

Re:"Certainly not"...

[gabriel_aristos]

This may sound like stating the obvious, but.. One copy, sure, but what if you need 3000 copies?

j

Re:"Certainly not"...

[koekepeer]

[sarcasm]
oooh, and then a modern day linux system is a good alternative ...
[/sarcasm]

try running kde/gnome/mozilla/staroffice on an old machine with limited memory

to be honest, i suddenly got really enthousiastic about linux desktop solutions when my P200 died and i bought myself an athlon900 with loads of memory

negative speak of linux: there goes my karma :-P

Re:"Certainly not"...

[rumba]

You ever tried to run ME, 2000 or XP on said 200 Mhz box? I thought not. You're right though, there's bloat on all three sides.

Re:"Certainly not"...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would belive it was a legal issue if the Half Priced Books in the Crossroads mall right next to Microsoft didn't sell used copied of MS products and in fact carries copies of software from the company store. Yet they never do anything about it other than tell employees not to resell stuff from the store.

Re:"Certainly not"...

[Arker]

try running kde/gnome/mozilla/staroffice on an old machine with limited memory

Why on earth would I do that? That would be silly.

What I would and have done, however, is run far less bloated programs on Linux on old hardware, and it runs just great. It's a simple matter of avoiding the bloat. Who needs KDE or Gnome? If you need X at all, use Blackbox, or IceWM, or WindowMaker. Mozilla? Get real. Netscape Navigator, Konquerer, Opera, or better yet, Lynx or Links. StarOffice? Please.

An old 486 with 16 Megs of ram will run Emacs (NoX), Links, Mutt, BitchX, and even Licq with the the text-mode plugin just fine.

Re:"Certainly not"...

[koekepeer]

I know, I know, but (I quote) "Emacs (NoX), Links, Mutt, BitchX, and even Licq with the the text-mode plugin" is not so easy to handle for Joe Average. I can imagine that the majority of the population of a 3rd world country is not so tech-minded/educated as the average /. reader. Then again, it could be a good testcase for the "Windows is easy to use because you are used to using it" hypothesis. ;-)

What I did mean is that if you want something similar to Windows on a "low end" machine, you don't have any alternatives for the easy-to-use Windows (MS) applications.

Again: Win98+Office+IE runs much faster than a *similar* Linux desktop on "low end" hardware.

And, eh, ask the average computer user whether they prefer Links over any graphical browser. I seriously doubt that they do...

Re:"Certainly not"...

[lblack]

I run Debian potato on a P200 with X/Afterstep.

It's a hella quicker than Windows 98 on same box.

I'm the opposite from you -- I got very interested in Linux when I found myself in possession of 4 computers in the P90-200 range.

-l

Re:"Certainly not"...

[Daengbo]

The P200 will not run fast if you do a local install, but I have quite a few at my university that I boot as a terminal, and they destroy the win 98 for speed.:) www.ltsp.org or www.k12os.org

Re:"Certainly not"...

[Arker]

You know, honestly, you obviously haven't the slightest clue what life in a third world country is like. These people are used to working for what they have, they aren't spoiled little whiners who insist everything be handed to them on a silver platter with gooey-gum-drop widgets. And that's why they are going to be eating our lunch soon, if we can just avoid bombing them for a few years.

Re:"Certainly not"...

[koekepeer]

I assume you know *everything* about what it's like to live in a 3rd world country?

If so, I stand corrected, and I do hope you are right -> about the lunch part I mean. They can eat it with me, though.

Still, I think it will take more than stopping random bombings on the "axes of evil" (or whatever) to turn around opportunities for 3rd world countries. Stopping bombings would be a good start, though...

Anyway, there is no need to start patronizing (spellcheck?) me, since you seem to automatically assume that I'm one of those "spoiled little whiners who insist eve... etc etc". Or am I this time over-interpreting *your* words?

Relax man, I was trying to make a point and I can swallow my pride when I've been incorrect... One can't be *right* all the time, are you?

Re:"Certainly not"...

[Arker]

I assume you know *everything* about what it's like to live in a 3rd world country?

I have more experience with it than most people. Mexico, China, Russia and Nigeria count I think, and if not it's because the real third world (how is it defined?) is even worse off, so my conclusions should just be stronger there. (I haven't actually been to any but Mexico, unfortunately, but I have developed close relationships with natives of the others, who were quite happy to enlighten me about conditions there, and I've had the opportunity to observe natives of both places for extended periods of time.)

Anyway, there is no need to start patronizing (spellcheck?) me, since you seem to automatically assume that I'm one of those "spoiled little whiners who insist eve... etc etc". Or am I this time over-interpreting *your* words?

You are over-interpreting me I believe. I was just pointing out that you seem to be assuming that people just won't use anything that isn't supremely "easy" to use. So you think they are either lazy or stupid or both? Third worlders are no dumber than the rest of us, and much less lazy.

In a very rich country it may well be that most people will not want to use old-school programs like I mentioned, because it is easy for them to get something that doesn't require as much work to learn to use (at a very basic level.) But in a poor country, that dynamic is not so likely to be there. It's one thing to turn down a 486 because you can go get a PIII and some gooey-gum-drops. (It's still mildly stupid, in my mind, since the gooey-gum-drop crap makes real work harder - not easier, but there is still some sense to it too - not everyone actually needs any real power anyway, and taking the path of least resistance is a fairly strong human behaviour pattern.) It would be quite another thing for someone who couldn't afford the PIII if they had 50 years salary liquid to turn down a perfectly functional 486!

So, in sum, I thought your comment was analogous to someone saying that sending old cars to third world countries was pointless, since no one would drive anything without ABS and the NorthStar system anyway. Silly.

Re:"Certainly not"...

[mgkimsal2]

Yeah that's a really good point, except that the slashdot system actually screwed it up somehow last week, and wouldn't take the change I put in... :0

Dang

[NiftyNews]

"The use of open source in the 3rd/2nd world is one way to get around licensing costs"

Now if only they could license food...

Re:Dang

[dagoalieman]

I'm sure they could probably arrange with some vendor of software to have some extra donations made in food to their country... A little bit of PR, especially these days, can go a long way in politics. A loud $5 worth of contributions can help your cause more than $100 silently.. (assuming legal ethics here..)

Seriously.. we aughta set something up for them, with a jokingly entitled "per license" gift.. Just the gift keeps on giving...

Re:Dang

[ImaLamer]

Well, why not use the computers as a tool to communicate?

Their local gov't could ask anyone in the world for tips on anything. Solar cooking, ethernet over barbed wire... the point would be to find something to solve all of their smaller problems.

There is the point of view that GPL software can be used by someone who doesn't have a dime. This alone saves money. But being able to chat, e-mail, use USENET, browse the web, etc... can help them. It can certainly help anyone around the house. Anyone can get online and ask for help with anything. Sometimes you get answers. Of course sometimes you can't.

Being able to open a free web page somewhere could help a local gov't solve a problem. Geocities could host the question, you provide an e-mail.

Hopefully that is what the computers would go for. You know they aren't going to 'Nuclear Research', but you hope they will help someone interface with the world.

When someone orders something from Amazon.com I will lose my faith in the idea.

Re:Dang

[oregon]

Now if only they could license food...

Open Sauce?

Re:Dang

[Twylite]

Oh dear, you must be an American. Try looking at http://www.polity.org.za/ which has information about SA, and links to most of the government web sites. We don't exactly need free hosting on Geocities; in fact we have already hosted an online debate on electronic commerce regulations (which is far more forward-looking than most developed nations).

Oh, by the by: [nucleartourist.com] (South Africa) ESKOM is the 5th largest utility in the world. They operate the 2 Koeburg reactors, each with a capacity of ~900 MWe. They do have a page listing their generating facilities with capacity.

ESKOM also developed and are prototyping pebble-based molecular reactors, which Germany and France gave up (citing as impractical) nearly two decades ago. These promise to provide cheap, clean and safe energy to anything up to a small city, and can be located where needed. They promise to be a solution to the energy problem in the third world.

Re:Dang

[Isofarro]

Hello Twy - fancy seeing you here :-)

ESKOM is the 5th largest utility in the world. They operate the 2 Koeburg reactors, each with a capacity of ~900 MWe.

I thought they closed down the Koeburg reactors well over a decade ago - have they reopened them?

Although ESKOM is a critical part of the success of Open Source in South Africa, since households would require electricity to power a pc in the first place. How much of SA is still without electricity (from a non-availability view, not non-payment)?

I'm glad to see SA taking a fantastic step in an excellent direction this time (unlike the malnutrition/Aids argument!).

Re:Dang

[Jeremi]

Now if only they could license food..

They can.

Re:Dang

[Twylite]

The Koeburg facility on the Cape west coast is still operational. A reactor glitch and some sort of stuff up at the national grid switch in the middle of the Cape was responsible for that massive power failure in Cape Town last year. That facility produces 3200MW, larger than the coal stations in the Transvaal.

The second reactor has always been experimental, and never produced power commercially. It was shut down some time ago. In light of it being 26 years old and having two safety "incidents" recently due to low maintenance budget, there are proposals to close Koeburg in the near future (2008-ish IIRC).

Re:Dang

[Anonymous Coward]

"I thought they closed down the Koeburg reactors well over a decade ago - have they reopened them?"

If they were closed then I must have been having some severe holucinations.... Living about 1K away I can tell that they are most certainly still active.

Nothing quite like being woken up by the early warning PA system though... "this is just a test......"

Re:Dang

[ImaLamer]

Hey, I'm not knocking anyone... I'm trying to support the idea of having computers everywhere.

a World Map

[Alien54]

I would like to see a map of the world color coded depending on the status of government support for open source, etc.

This would be probably educational, as well as a possible boost in moral.

Something titled: "Countries in the world where open source is recommended"

Extra brownie points for links, etc.

Re:a World Map

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to see all these "cutting-edge" societies ...
Dude, you don't want to see that map ... trust me.

Re:a World Map

[SONET]

I find it ironic that you 'would like to see' an open-source map, implying that you are expecting someone else to create it for you. Has the thought ever occured to you that you could do a little research and put together such a map as a contribution to 'education' and to 'boost morale'? Although ideas are nice, the open source world relies on actual contributions.

To conclude, I find your mindset disturbing and hope you decide to act on your ideas in the future instead of expecting others to act on them for you.

--SONET

Re:a World Map

[Anonymous Coward]

(Work + businesses) / hobbies = life. :)

You're a fucking loser

Re:a World Map

[americanFatCat]

We've already got the nationalism down pat; we just need some nations dammit! Not really my sig, but hey--------------------- You can't claim a land, if you don't have a flag. Emperors fight for colors on a map.

Re:a World Map

[zhensel]

Not to mention that the open source world relies heavily on groundless flames to provide its inspiration. Did it ever occur to you that the original poster may not have the expertise to research and create the map as effectively as others, but came up with a novel idea that he wished to share with the community? It seems to me that actual creation comes second to the freedom of ideas that truly defines the open source movement.

There was no tone of demand in the statement, only a call for any help that the rest of the community may be able to provide. Though, I suppose you may be right - it would be far better for him to strike fourth and research the entirety of the world's internet infrastructure, implement a mapping system, and then present us with such a glorious gift without first asking if something even exists.

Re:a World Map

[Roto-Rooter Man]

If I had no money, I'd use Linux too. Stable, civilized governments, however, can afford real software.

Re:a World Map

[Alien54]

relax. Some people like the effort that goes into re-inveting the wheel. You can learn a lot from doing that sort of thing.

as for me, I have enough going on trying to keep food on the table.

Re:a World Map

[joonasl]

Yeah, The world is full of unstable, uncivilized governments such as EU countries. Poor bastards.

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My Favourite Quote

[Why Should I]

This had me in stitches

Needless to say, lowering software costs by violating proprietary license conditions is not an option. Happily, there are often legal alternatives to proprietary software: non-proprietary "open software".&nbsp(emphasis by me)

Sounds like their saying that they could just steal proprietry software, but it makes them sad.

Using open source is not only good for these people monetarily, it's good for them emotionally, since it makes them happy. - lol

I just hope they fully understand the prinicpal behind releasing any code that uses GPL code in it, i.e. using GPL software components as opposed to just using GPL software applications.

Re:My Favourite Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

I just hope they fully understand the prinicpal behind releasing any code that uses GPL code in it, i.e. using GPL software components as opposed to just using GPL software applications.

Are you saying you think dumb fucking niggers know how to program?!?!? hahahahahaha.

Re:My Favourite Quote

[Why Should I]

Thats just in poor taste, you idiot

Re:My Favourite Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

And it is in "good taste" when these "black citizens of SA" widely believe that raping 3 year old girl will heal their HIV infection ...

He just called them what they are .. a stupid , dump niggers.

Re:My Favourite Quote

[Gorobei]

It made me laugh too: it's a beautifully dry bit of writing.

Obviously, the author could have said: "most of our users just ignore proprietary licenses and install the software anyway. We would prefer a plan that doesn't expose us to future lawsuits." But what he wrote got the same point across without implying past sins, yet at the same time showing a course of action that is good and clearly not an attempt to hide prior (obviously non-existent) violations.

All in all, a really nice turn of phrase.

Re:My Favourite Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft probably doesn't 'hope you understand' *their* liscense. Or do they?

A good start ..

[Eloquence]

.. would be to clean up the "HTML" produced by Microsoft Word for their report. My eyes are burning!

Re:A good start ..

[L.Torvalds]

DID SOMEONE SAY FILTHY COONS?

News Flash!

[jtdubs]

News Flash! Poor Counties Choose Free Operating Systems!

Justin Dubs

Re:News Flash!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this shit down. South Africa isn't even a poor country.

Re:News Flash!

[Anonymous Coward]

They're working on it. Believe me, they are.

Re:News Flash!

[Anonymous Coward]

give'em time, just give'em time ;-)
You cant expect SA to accomplish in 10 years what has taken a real qualified baboon (Mugabe) 25 years.

That Depends on Your Point of View...

[BlackGriffen]

"at least more honest then pirating."

Well, the honesty of pirating depends on your point of view, the practical consequences (trade sanctions, government raids, etc.) do add a significant potential cost factor to pirating that isn't there for open source software.

If Open Source can win the minds of the actual majority of the world, Microsoft may one day be forced to be compatible with it in order to continue doing business in these places. One can only hope...

BlackGriffen

Re:That Depends on Your Point of View...

[argoff]

Actually, lets talk about the honesty of pirating. Last I checked, illegal copying is a lot different than boarding a ship, killing or beating the passengers to a bloody pulp while looting the goods (which they do not get to keep an original copy of BTW). The fact that they half to lie so hard about the name should be telling just in itself. Now really, is Microsoft not going to have an incentive to "innovate" unless they can lock out people in Africa from copying software?

Re:Ahahahahahaha! Sucker!

[Eso]

Seriously, I got an FP earlier today. It was the 10th of my career.

Slashdot rules!

NACI: Gov't of South Africa Pushs Open Source

[ekrout]

NACI: Gov't of South Africa Pushs Open Source

Let's hope they get a copy of the GNU2CanSpell spellchecker. It's obvious that the Slashdot editors didn't ;-)

*sorry Rob, we're still buddies*

Re:NACI: Gov't of South Africa Pushs Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. It took them 20 minutes to finally correct that mistake. WOW.

Re:NACI: Gov't of South Africa Pushs Open Source

[Gruuk]

Oh, that was done on purpose; they used a more poetic form of the verb. As we all know, Slashdot is the last best hope for litterature! ;)

Re:NACI: Gov't of South Africa Pushs Open Source

[kilrogg]

It must be the political spelling: Governor pushs math initiative

You know...

[L.Torvalds]

Ever since apartheid ended in South Africa, and the niggers took over, that country hasn't been worth shit.

At least under apartheid there was one segment of society that was succuessfull. Now, they are all nigger-poor.

FILTHY COONS
Can you believe those filthy kefirs, raping babys because they think that they can cure AIDS that way? Only a savage nigger could think like that.

Anyhow, I have to get going. Alien54, it was great discussing racial science with you! Hope to see you around!

Re:Ahahahahahaha! Sucker!

[Pr0n K1ng]

That good stuff, d00d. Keep up the good work.

3rd world? 2nd world? 1st world?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a quick comment: these terms have a specific political meaning and they're not being used correctly here. The first world is defined as being the post-war US+Allies+Japan capitalist bloc, the second world is defined as being Russia and it's allied Soviet republics. The third world is defined as being the non-committed nations, often times former colonies now under self-rule. This can be verifed with a simple search on the web, or the old way - reading a book. South Africa, for all it's faults, is not a second or third world country - it was and is a member of the US-led capitalist bloc, and as such, like the former Brit colonies of Oz and Canada, it's a first world country. So there.

Re:3rd world? 2nd world? 1st world?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dissed hard. I too dislike it when people use "third world" when they mean LDC.

Re:3rd world? 2nd world? 1st world?

[Anonymous Coward]

But then the niggers took it over from their European rulers and turned it into a third world shithole. Now fuck off.

Re:3rd world? 2nd world? 1st world?

[DrSpin]

Mod this to the bottom of the tar pit. Its totally wrong.

The divisions were originally

Old World Europe, Asia, etc - basically all those poeple who had writing before the time of Christ.

New World The Americas

Third World The rest.

This was a social distinction that made sense 100 years ago.

The one, two, three business is a Socialist propaganda device, that has been taken on board by the ignorant twits that run the media these days.

Ps: Maybe slashdot needs a [spellcheque] buttong as well as [preview] and [submit]!

Re:3rd world? 2nd world? 1st world?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what about south american indians like the incas etc?
They could write, right?

Re:3rd world? 2nd world? 1st world?

[IcI]

Sure, politically speaking RSA is a 1st world country, geographically & mentally, a lot of people think RSA is a 3rd world country. Even in RSA. I've had enough discussions with people on either side and on the fence.

Re:actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

When I first read this oobservation I thought "hey that's true!"

But looking at past slashbacks they actually 99% of the time begin with "slashback tonight" "tonight on slashback" or "slashback this evening"

Spell check

[Foxxz]

maybe pushs should be pushes open source?

Redundant

[Ralph JewHater Nader]

Niggers are stupid. What else is new?

Re:I NEED TO MAKE SOME CASH, SO I WILL POST SPAM H

[Fecal Troll Matter]

I clicked there to start but nothing happened. Please fix this problem.

Unenviable position of South Africa

[bushboy]

South Africa finds itself in the unenvieable position of being one of the most stable and prosperous nations in Africa, with a democracy that works.

It's unenvieable because we have to take the responsibility for the rest of Africa and try to somehow clean up the mess it's in, but at the same time, not be seen in the same light as a country like Zimbabwe, our next door neighbour - unfortunately, this is happening anyway !

Open source is a good place to start in Africa, but it's not much use in many countries in Africa if there's no computers, or power !

Lets face it, computers for the population of poorer nations is not really as important as a stable economy and jobs - you can't eat computers !

What is important is getting the government and government departments of those poor nations on track regarding the use of computers to try to make things more efficient - South Africa, which is fairly technologically adept - is in a good position to make this happen. IOW, a smaller undertaking to try to help the infrastructure of poorer countries cope.

Yes, we do have the latest computer hardware and software over here in South Afica and techies who know how to use them :)

So, South Africa should take a leading role in providing cheap computer solutions to poorer nations - good for us ! - it's nice to read something positive about Africa for a change :)

Re:Unenviable position of South Africa

[Anonymous Coward]

"it's nice to read something positive about Africa"

Don't kid yourself.
You are talking about Europeans in Africa for it was them who managed to create by far the most prosperous nation in Africa.

It really worries my when I see current establishment drifting more and more towards far left socialist.

Re:Unenviable position of South Africa

[Anonymous Coward]

you can't eat computers
Stick an iMac for five mins in a blender, then zap it for 2 mins, it's very nice.

Strawberry, YUM!!!

Re:Unenviable position of South Africa

[Isofarro]

Lets face it, computers for the population of poorer nations is not really as important as a stable economy and jobs - you can't eat computers

A computer is a means to an end, not the end itself. Its the same with miners. You can't eat gold, but you can sell them on an international market at international prices, that gives you income to buy food.

The same with computers. With a computer, you learn new skills, these skills you use to deliver quality goods, which produces income to buy food that you can eat.

Look at how far India have come in the last decade by offering their computer skills. I know IBM SA were largely dependant on Indian talent to fix the Y2K problem. India's investment has paid off handsomely - SA can do the same, if it really wants to succeed.

Open source makes it easier to legally start down that road. I believe Mexico or Brazil are trying the same road at the moment - so it will be a great experience for South Africans that do participate.

Re:Unenviable position of South Africa

[75bhp]

Offtopic, but interesting none the less:-

The last company I worked for in SA up until 1999 was busy in a co-development with Shell Renuable Resources to provide portable solar power sources, targeted at Africans with no present electricity (and I mean the guys who live in huts). While not aimed at the SA market there were a couple of pilot sites set up locally.

Basically, a tenant received the system, comprising a unit, roughly 1/4 of a cubic metre, and a mast with a solar panel (1m x 0.5m), as well as some 12V lighting. He/she also had access to a catalogue of 12V appliances--eg. radios etc. The unit consisted of a 12V lead-acid truck battery, and some software driven charging and supply management, amongst other things. While you wouldn't expect the system to provide power continuously, I remember the solar panel itself was spec'd at 30W.

Just goes to show that intitiatives are in place to solve the rural electricity problem.

In order to provide a revenue stream, tenants had to purchase prepaid tokens, allowing them to operate the system for 30days at a time.

Without going into too much detail, the token, vending and key management side of things was the mature bit, having been proven over the past 10 years in prepaid, metered mains electricity supply.

Not really

[m4g02]

Everybody talks like if they knew since years that 3rd world countries use Open source... well, i have beent on a lot of this countries for long and will tell you something:

They DONT use open source stuff, its usually more difficult than Microsoft software and there is not enough education there to, lets say, recompile the kernel. They are in a piracy hipe, you can find full streets of pirated software stores and you can find from screensavers to SQL 2000.

They use Windows and more Windows, all pirated, even small to medium corporations use pirates Microsoft stuff, goverment has so many things to worry that looking for pirated software isnt even in the list.

Re:Not really

[Teun]

I agree the vast majority of 3rd world computers (including those in SA) run on pirated Micro$oft.
I don't agree the users would not be able to f.e. recompile a Kernel.
Quite the contrary, two things are needed to compile a Kernel on an older machine, the will to and plenty of time.
Time is the cheapest thing around in these places and the will to do it can be promoted with programs like proposed in the original document.

Personaly I am convinced that those learning to use a computer using OS tools will, after the obvious initial problems, become far more qualified than those just clicking the pre-programmed buttons of closed source.

Re:Not really

[mav[LAG]]

Everybody talks like if they knew since years that 3rd world countries use Open source... well, i have beent on a lot of this countries for long and will tell you something:

South Africa is not a true 3rd World country. It's a strange mix of 1st and 3rd: 1st in that it has an enviable constitution, democratically elected government, advanced intrastructure, 10 times the teledensity of the rest of Africa - including three GSM operators - and a very mature IT market; 3rd in that there are still vast areas of extreme poverty and a serious serious problem with HIV in some provinces.

They DONT use open source stuff, its usually more difficult than Microsoft software and there is not enough education there to, lets say, recompile the kernel. They are in a piracy hipe, you can find full streets of pirated software stores and you can find from screensavers to SQL 2000.

Leaving aside the fact that everyone I know in South Africa can at least write better English than this post, here are a few facts:

• The BSA is very active here. It's members include all the usual suspects - Microsoft, Autodesk, Lotus et al - each of whom have large local offices with direct ties to their principals in the US. There's a current case about an entrepreneur who purchased a number of second hand machines from a large local bank only to be accused of piracy by Microsoft SA because of Windows license transfer issues.
  
• Open Source is proving a very attractive option for companies here who have to deal with a fluctuating and unfavorable exchange rate with the US Dollar. Software that costs $100 must be multiplied by roughly 14 to get the price in local currency - a highly depressing state of affairs since the Economist's Burgernomics method reckons the Rand should be around 4,5 to the Dollar. As a result, South Africa has some of the largest Linux installations in the world in some sectors. Microsoft costs too much and the authorities rightly don't like the idea of revenue leaving the country when perfectly acceptable free alternatives exist.
  
• There is more than enough education here to do simple things like compiling the kernel. A couple of the FreeBSD core maintenance team are South African (hi Neil :) and the editor of one of the most respected business/computer magazines compiled his Linux kernel for an upcoming feature.
  
• You most certainly can NOT find "full streets of pirated software stores" in South Africa. Maybe the odd flea market operator, but nearly all retailers are extremely careful because of the ever-present threat from the BSA.
  

Re:Not really

[m4g02]

Ok, i never mentionated South Africa, i said 3rd world countries, and i cant speak about South Africa myself since i have never been there, but i have been on Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, and many other 3rd world countries, now about my funny if not ugly english its becaus im from a 3rd world country, so i know what im talking about like you.

I dont know if South Africa can write better english than me, i dont think the percent statics will tell me that, but leaving behind your flamebait or angry, whatever you call it, you cant talk about a country like if it was a person, no matter your friends are for there and could kick my ass on everything about linux the percent could tell me something different. Now i will tell you again i never had been there but from all the 3rd world countries i know everything i said was a fact.

Re:Not really

[MorgulBlade]

"there is not enough education there to, lets say, recompile the kernel." Not true at all. You would be Surprised at the level of education that is achieved in these countries. Sometimes it rivals the US and in some cases it exceeds the US. The difference is that the country itself does not have the resources to fully exploit its Knowledge base. The US and other developed countries have vast resources available to them so they can spend money on research and development. The money in these countries is used for more "important" things such as social development etc. Most of the educated people eventually find there way to the developed countries where they are utilized doing all the highly skilled jobs that yopu think they aren't educated enough to do.

National Advisory Council on Innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

A fucking "National Advisory Council on Innovation "
?

Hey, that should tell you something about direction SA is headed.
Most of you don't realize how bad that country went down since leftists and blacks took over.
Imagine your typical downtown bank with shiny floors etc ..
Then imagine one day you walk in there and there are groups of black sitting on the floor around fucking fire, papers all over the place, basically barbarians took over the city.
It is precisely what happened in SA.
I kid you not. Some parts of downtown are completely off-limit, basically governed by local gangs.
Rape is so common it is not even considered unusuall event.
SA used to socialy unjust but at least was well-maintained place ( in fact, Blacks from all over Africa were dying to get into this terrible racist-run place. That should tell you something ..)

Ah, give it another 10-20 years and it will be no different than every other shithole in Africa.

First things first.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not start with convincing the natives that raping infants will *not* cure HIV? Sounds like a better place to start than going on about Open Source.

Hemos Pushs Open Spelling

[passion]

Dude, Hemos... learn to spell.

There are plenty of reasons to do this, the best reason would be to stop looking like an idiot. Professionalism not only involves mastering a clever plan, but also taking care of all the little details. Another reason why it's important to spell things correctly is to find proper search results, or grep matches.

There are plenty of other idiots out there, you don't need to enlarge their ranks:
linnux
Slahdot - Number of visits: 310481 (Since 09-23-2000)
slahsdot
Naspter
Mircosoft

Re:Hemos Pushs Open Spelling

[Anonymous Coward]

typo != idiots
and
spelling mistake != idiots

As a dyslix, I find that VERY insluting...

But Hemos, ispell! It's your friend!

immoral or (just) illegal?

[MassacrE]

You know, I sometimes wonder if copying is really immoral, or if we have been brought up to think so.

Limited protections against copying in a western, capitalistic society makes sense; you want to protect new ventures by providing them with protections against their work being taken and sold by a competitor without regards to the development costs.

However, I wonder if other cultures somewhere do not have this sort of mentality. I just wonder if in some societies and cultures, if one person would be considered immoral for wanting more rights to something they took part in making than everyone else?

I don't know the answer, I'm just curious of other's insights.

Re:immoral or (just) illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't know the answer, I'm just curious of other's insights."

You don't know the answer ?
Fucking take your time and look around you.
What do you see ?
A fucking rich, cutting-edge societies of Africa and Asia ?
Who do you think had a better ideas how to run their societies; Westerners or others?
The answer is clear my friend and you know it.
After all, we were not "choosen people". Everyone started from the same fucking tree ...

Re:immoral or (just) illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot the logical fallacy. Since other countries don't have the tech, this is due solely to their lack of prosecuting those who share copies of software with their friends.

Also, suppressed evidence, like all the stuff that these 'cutting edge' western countries stole from them. :)

Good day. Thanks for filling my gun full of ammo.

Re:immoral or (just) illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep.

We stole the intellectual property used to produce the first transistor from this guy who lives in a grass hut in Kenya.

We stole the intellectual property for the first integrated circuit from a dude who herds sheep in the Ivory Coast.

One thing we didn't steal, of course, were the blacks we have in Africa. They were purchased from their fellow black Africans and in some instances Arabs.

Re:immoral or (just) illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god.

That was fucking funny.

Point AC.

Re:immoral or (just) illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, if civilizations in Africa and South America had been allowed to progress on their own, (I mean without being plundered, conquered and enslaved by Europeans, etc), who knows what they would have produced, but colonization and slavery had the effect of halting progress for huge populations of people. Anyone ever wondered why cities look the same no matter where you are in the world?

Re:immoral or (just) illegal?

[NineNine]

That's funny... both India and Hong Kong were colonized, yet they're doing just fine. I wonder why...

Alan Thicke. DEAD.

[Alan_Thicke]

I just heard the sad news on CBC radio. Comedy actor/writer Alan Thicke was found dead in his home this morning. Even if you never watched his work, you can appreciate what he did for 80's television. Truly a Canadian icon.
He will be missed :(



Show me That Smile (The Growing Pains Theme Song):

Show me that smile again.
Ooh show me that smile.
Don't waste another minute on your crying.
We're nowhere near the end.
We're nowhere near.
The best is ready to begin.

As long as we got each other
We got the world
Sitting right in our hands.
Baby rain or shine;
All the time.
We got each other
Sharing the laughter and love.

Bullshit

[bushboy]

You speak total crap.

Sure, parts of South Africa have been run down to a degree, but it's nowhere near as bad as you make out.

The truth of the matter is that it was a country whose infrastructure only ever really had to cope with 7 to 8 million priviledged whites - the rest of the nation lived in poor conditions.

Now that infrastructure has to cope with 40 million people to provide what they have never had before.

Catch a wake up - if you live in South Africa like me, either lend a hand to build the economy or piss of to Australia or somewhere

jerk

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, please who do you think made SA the ONLY fucking industrialized society on the whole fucking continent?
Do I speak crap when I say that thousands of blacks were illegaly entering SA during white domination?
These blacks prefered to live in civilized society ,they prefered segregated society run by whites to their own "free" societies run by their own people.
That is powerfull social statement my friend and no amount of political correctness will change that.

Re:Bullshit

[bushboy]

Excuse me ?

In your first post you basically said that SA is heading in the same direction as the rest of Africa.

This is clearly not the case and is why I answered "Bullshit"

Do you live here ? - eh ?

Here I sit in an airconditioned office in South Africa, surrounded by computers and all the trappings of a modern office and you tell me we're going down the shithole ?

Your knowledge about this country is sadly lacking - you neglect to mention the population breakdown of indians, whites, coloureds and blacks which makes this country so unique.
You neglect to mention that large investment in South Africa is finally taking place.

Your negativity is sad - really sad and is typical of the "we're better than they'll ever be" European mindset.

Yes, South Africa has loads of really serious problems - Aids, Crime etc. - but name a country without problems - look at Argentina for christs sake, or the Balkans ?

We've got a lot more problems to face, but I remain positive that because of our unique country, we'll make it through them.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you stay in that air-conditioned office with the doors shut tight lest some of your kinsmen there decide that poking sys-admins in the bum will lower the unemployment rate (allusion to raping virgins as a cure for aids for all those out of the loop).

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yes, South Africa has loads of really serious problems - Aids, Crime etc. - but name a country without problems - look at Argentina for christs sake, or the Balkans ?"

I'm not sure why you added a question mark to a declarative sentence, but grammar has never been /.'s forte, anyway.

Argentina, and the rest of South America for that matter, are occupied by mixed race people. Sure, they have quite a bit of White blood in them, due to the Portuguese and Spanish settlers, but the Blacks they brought over as slaves (14,000,000 compared to North America's 500,000) have long since been genetically interwoven into the population, as have the Native Indians. Argentinians are not White, which is what you were alluding to.

As for the Balkans, they were merely killing Muslim settlers that were slowly taking over their land. I see no problem with that.

Immigration is a slow form of invasion. No military is involved, but the end result is the same. They are the majority. They control the money. They occupy the land. They hold the political power.

Are you prepared to rely on another race to be equitable to Whites when they hold the reigns? I'm not.

A discussion about the document..

[heytal]

A discussion is on the same website here I Read through a few of the discussions. Most of them would be better than 5:Insightful. And maybe people would copy a few of them here :-)

No wonder my submissions get rejected...

[Anonymous Coward]

I spell-check them.

Editors probably think I'm all snobby or something.

MOSHOOD Mobutu Sese Seko

[Anonymous Coward]

MOSHOOD SEKO,
107 ADENUGA STREET,
ANTHONY VILLAGE,
LAGOS.

I am MOSHOOD Mobutu Sese Seko, son of the late
President Mobutu Sese Seko of Congo Democratic Republic former
Republic of Zaire presently there is a war going on in
my country and so my family members escaped to Morroco

while I am presently at Cotonou/Nigeria Border
monitoring events. Because of the present crises, my
environment is not conductive for investment and more
over, most of my fathers properties and account have
been frozen by the present government of Laurent
Kabila.

Now, I want to set up a business overseas and I have
about $50 Million united state dollars set aside for
this project, I decided to contact you to help me in
setting up a business, but would not want my name or
family name to be used.

I am prepared to give you 20% of the total sum if you
can assist me in claiming this fund from a security
volt in Europe where my father (Mobutu Sese Seko)
deposited this fund before he died.

Please, do contact me immediately for us to discuss.
As soon as I hear from you, and confirm your
assistance every documents regarding to the claiming
of this fund will be handed over to you as the
family's foreign partner.

Best regards,

MOSHOOD SEKO.

ISLAMIC LAW IS CLEAR

[Roto-Rooter Man]

Chapter 2: HE WHO SEES A WOMAN, AND HIS HEART IS AFFECTED, SHOULD COME TO HIS
WIFE, AND SHOULD HAVE INTERCOURSE WITH HER

Jabir reported that Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) saw a woman, and
so he came to his wife, Zainab, as she was tanning a leather and had sexual
intercourse with her. He then went to his Companions and told them: The woman
advances and retires in the shape of a devil, so when one of you sees a woman,
he should come to his wife, for that will repel what he feels in his heart.

Jabir heard Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) say: When a woman fascinates
any one of you and she captivates his heart, he should go to his wife and have
an intercourse with her, for it would repel what he feels.

Chapter 9: SEEKING CONSENT OF AL-THAYYIBIN MARRIAGE IN WORDS AND OF A VIRGIN IN
(MEANINGFUL) SILENCE

Abu Huraira (Allah be pleased with him) reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be
upon him) as having said: A woman without a husband (or divorced or a widow)
must not be married until she is consulted, and a virgin must not be married
until her permission is sought. They asked the Prophet of Allah (may peace be
upon him): How her (virgin's) consent can be solicited? He (the Holy Prophet)
said: That she keeps silence.

Chapter 10: IT IS PERMISSIBLE FOR THE FATHER TO GIVE THE HAND OF HIS DAUGHTER IN
MARRIAGE EVEN WHEN SHE IS NOT FULLY GROWN UP

'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Allah's Apostle (may peace be
upon him) married her when she was seven years old, and he was taken to his
house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her; and when he
(the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old.

Chapter 14: EXCELLENCE OF EXMANCIPATING A SLAVE-GIRL AND THEN MARRYING HER

Abu Musa reported that Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said about one
who emancipated a slave woman, and then married her, that for him there are two
rewards.

Chapter 17: IT IS NOT PERMISSIBLE TO MARRY A WOMAN WHO IS DIVORCED BY THREE
PRONOUNCEMENTS UNTIL SHE IS MARRIED TO ANOTHER MAN AND HE HAS A SEXUAL
INTERCOURSE WITH HER, AND THEN HE ABANDONS HER AND SHE COMPLETES HER 'IDDA

'A'Asha (Allah be pleased with her) reported: A person divorced his wife by
three pronouncements; then another person married her and he also divorced her
without having sexual intercourse with her. Then the first husband of her
intended to remarry her. It was about such a case that Allah's Messenger (may
peace be upon him) was asked, whereupon he said: No, until the second one has
tasted her sweetness as the first one had tasted.

Chapter 19: PERMISSIBILITY OF HAVING SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH ONE'S WIFE FROM THE
FRONT OR FROM BEHIND AVOIDING THE ANUS

Jabir (b. Abdullah) (Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Jews used to
say that when one comes to one's wife through the vagina, but being on her back,
and she becomes pregnant, the child has a squint. So the verse came down:" Your
wives are your ti'Ith; go then unto your tilth, as you may desire."

This hadith has been reported on the authority of Jabir through another chain of
transmitters, but in the hadith transmitted on the authority of Zuhri there is
an addition (of these words):" If he likes he may (have intercourse) being on
the back or in front of her, but it should be through one opening (vagina)."

Chapter 22: AL AZL (INCOMPLETE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE): COITUS INTERRUPTUS

Abu Sirma said to Abu Sa'id al Khadri (Allah he pleased with him): 0 Abu Sa'id,
did you hear Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) mentioning al-'azl? He
said: Yes, and added: We went out with Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him)
on the expedition to the Bi'l-Mustaliq and took captive some excellent Arab
women; and we desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives,
(but at the same time) we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have
sexual intercourse with them but by observing 'azl (Withdrawing the male sexual
organ before emission of semen to avoid-conception). But we said: We are doing
an act whereas Allah's Messenger is amongst us; why not ask him? So we asked
Allah's Mes- senger (may peace be upon him), and he said: It does not matter if
you do not do it, for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of
Resurrection will be born.

Chapter 23: IT IS FORBIDDEN TO HAVE INTERCOURSE WITH A PREGNANT SLAVE-WOMAN

Abu Darda' (Allah be pleased with him) related from the Prophet of Allah (may
peace be upon him) that he came upon a woman who was in the advanced stage of
pregnancy at the door of a tent. He (the Holy Prophet) said: Perhaps he (the man
accompanying her) intends to cohabit with her. They said: Yes. Thereupon Allah's
Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: I have decided to curse him with such a
curse as may go along with him to his grave. How can he own him (the child to be
born) and that is not lawful for him, and how can he take him as a servant for
that is not lawful for him?

Chapter 24: PERMISSIBILITY OF INTERCOURSE WITH A SUCKLING LADY AND DISAPPROVAL
OF 'AZL

Judama daughter of Wahb, sister of Ukkasha (Allah be pleased with her).
reported: I went to Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) along with some
persons and he was saying: I intended to prohibit cohabitation with the suckling
women, but I considered the Greeks and Persians, and saw that they suckle their
children and this thing (cohabitation) does not do any harm to them (to the
suckling women). Then they asked him about 'azl, whereupon he said. That is the
secret (way of) burying alive, and Ubaidullah has made this addition in the
hadith transmitted by al-Muqri and that is:" When the one buried alive is
asked."

Chapter 27: ONE SUCKLING OR TWO DO NOT MAKE MARRIAGE UNLAWFUL

Umm al-Fadl reported: A bedouin came to Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him)
when he was in my house and said: Allah's Apostle, I have had a wife and I
married another besides her, and my first wife claimed that she had suckled once
or twice my newly married wife, thereupon Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon
him) said: One suckling or two do not make the (marriage) unlawful.

Chapter 28: SUCKLING OF A YOUNG (BOY)

' A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Sahla bint Suhail came to
Allah's Apostle (may peace be eupon him) and said: Messengerof Allah, I see on
the face of Abu Hudhaifa (signs of disgust) on entering of Salim (who is an
ally) into (our house), whereupon Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) said:
Suckle him. She said: How can I suckle him as he is a grown-up man? Allah's
Messenger (may peace be upon him) smiled and said: I already know that he is a
young man 'Amr has made this addition in his narration that he participated in
the Battle of Badr and in the narration of Ibn 'Umar (the words are): Allah's
Messenger (may peace be upon him) laughed.

Chapter 29: IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO HAVE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH A CAPTIVE WOMAN
AFTER SHE IS PURIFIED (OF MENSES OR DELIVERY) IN CASE SHE HAS A HUSBAND, HER
MARRIAGE IS ABROGATED AFTER SHE BECOMES CAPTIVE

Yes, they REALLY are...

[JesseL]

I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to resell old software,but Microsoft cerainly has.

Re:Yes, they REALLY are...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry guy, that wasn't Microsoft - it was me. I just like to fuck with ebay, you know?

Re:Yes, they REALLY are...

[WIAKywbfatw]

I guess you could always argue the point that you hadn't used the software (perhaps you had bought the software in error, had decided against using it after reading the EULA, etc) and thus were legally just reselling on what was sold to you in the first place.

But when ebay gets a call from Microsoft they aren't going to think twice about jumping on command. I would imagine that you could call them up and debate the semantics of the situation with an ebay representative but I'd bet the bottom line would be the same - no auction for you.

IANAL, but I'm willing to bet that, given the right ammunition, there are circumstances under which you could prevail. Though I doubt that, once you've shelled out for legal representation, you wouldn't have much to show for efforts, even if you managed to get full retail value for the package.

Personally, I'd take it up with ebay but stop short of calling in the suits. At worst, it'll get them squirming about it for a while and, at best, you might just catch a break.

Re:Yes, they REALLY are...

[MathJMendl]

I guess you could always argue the point that you hadn't used the software (perhaps you had bought the software in error)

Good idea, committing fraud should solve this person's legal problems.

Re:Yes, they REALLY are...

[Teun]

You are quite correct about Micro$oft's ambitions as a Justice department in their own right.
Yet at the same time it seems no decent jurisprudence seems to exist in the US of A to support their claim.
And in countries like Germany and Holland Jurisprudence has gone against the Micro$oft view and there are even companies who's business plan is based on trade in second-hand software licences!

I'd be surprised Microsoft would get away with their claims of greed in South Africa.

Re:Yes, they REALLY are...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Perhaps next time you use a quote from one of my posts you could do me the courtesy of not editing it first?

After all, what I wrote was this:

I guess you could always argue the point that you hadn't used the software (perhaps you had bought the software in error, had decided against using it after reading the EULA, etc) and thus were legally just reselling on what was sold to you in the first place.

Where from reading that, or the rest of my post, you saw me saying "lie about it and break the law" is a mystery to me. Must be nice to see things that aren't there.

What I was trying to illustrate was that there are many reasons why a piece of software might be lying on a shelf having never been used. Basically, at any point up to the owner's acceptance of any EULA, s/he is not the end user, and can arguably dispose of the software in a reasonable manner.

In effect s/he has just become another link in the supply chain. Just as the software was sold my the manufacturer to a distributor, then to a retail/mail order/online software vendor, and then to the current owner. Heck, this happens everyday - people buy software for friends all the time and the transfer of ownership is perfectly legal as long as the person who is handing over the software has not been bound by the terms of a EULA.

Of course, opening up the package, installing it, using it for a couple of months and then deciding to sell it on is illegal (rightly or wrongly, wrongly in my opinion).

But, opening up the package, flicking through the manuals, reading and rejecting the EULA and then deciding to sell it on is perfectly legal (and I'd like to see Microsoft or someone else even argue otherwise).

Now nowhere in the comment that I was replying to did the poster state whether on not they had accepted the EULA, used the software, etc. S/he simply states that they decided to go down another route. So, reselling the software s/he has maybe perfectly legal, in which case Microsoft and ebay might have jumped the gun in pulling the auction. But that's another story.

(Of course, IANAL, but this is all well-established under fair use, etc statutes.)

Re:Yes, they REALLY are...

[SLot]

OS Resale might be the answer to your problems. :)

I think there could be a BIG tea-party brewin'....

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that I've seen it put as bluntly as this.....all we need now is a "Declaration of Windows Independence"

".... Whether or not the Rand enjoys an upswing in future, it makes sense to minimise risk through avoidance, where possible, of dollar-based software license fees and through vigorous encouragement and support of local software development efforts."

Do you think it was the price? Or was it the software license raids that pushed them over the edge?

Viva la source!

Cunniligus How To

[Anonymous Coward]

Most women are shy about their bodies. Even if you've got the world's most gorgeous woman in bed with you, she's going to worry about how you like her body. Tell her it's beautiful, tell her which parts you like best, tell her anything, but get her to trust you enough to let you down between her legs. Now stop and look at what you see. Beautiful, isn't it? There is nothing that makes a woman more unique than her pussy. I know. I've seen plenty of them. They come in all different sizes, colors and shapes; some are tucked inside like a little girl's cunnie and some have thick luscious lips that come out to greet you. Some are nested in brushes of fur and others are covered with transparent fuzz. Appreciate your woman's unique qualities and tell her what makes her special. Women are a good deal more verbal than men, especially during love-making. They also respond more to verbal love, which means, the more you talk to her, the easier it will be to get her off. So all the time you're petting and stroking her beautiful pussy, talk to her about it.

Now look at it again. Gently pull the lips apart and look at her inner lips, even lick them if you want to. Now spread the tops of her pussy up until you can find her clit. Women have clits in all different sizes, just like you guys have different sized cocks. It doesn't mean a thing as far as her capacity for orgasm. All it means is more of her is hidden underneath her foreskin.

Whenever you touch a woman's pussy, make sure your finger is wet. You can lick it or moisten it with juices from inside her. Be sure, by all means, to wet it before you touch her clit because it doesn't have any juices of it's own and it's extremely sensitive. Your finger will stick to it if it's dry and that hurts. But you don't want to touch her clit anyway. You have to work up to that. Before she becomes aroused, her clit is too delicate to be handled. Approach her pussy slowly.

Women, even more so than men, love to be teased. The inner part of her thigh is her most tender spot. Lick it, kiss it, make designs on it with the tip of your tongue. Come dangerously close to her pussy, then float away. Make her anticipate it. Now lick the crease where her leg joins her pussy. Nuzzle your face into her bush. Brush your lips over her slit without pressing down on it to further excite her.

After you've done this to the point where your lady is bucking up from her seat and she's straining to get more of you closer to her, then put your lips right on top of her slit. Kiss her, gently, then harder. Now use your tongue to separate her pussy lips and when she opens up, run your tongue up and down between the layers of pussy flesh. Gently spread her legs more with your hands. Everything you do with a woman you're about to eat must be done gently. Tongue-fuck her. This feels devine. It also teases the hell out of her because by now she wants some attention given to her clit.

Check it out. See if her clit has gotten hard enough to peek out of it's covering. If so, lick it. If you can't see it, it might still be waiting for you underneath. So bring your tongue up to the top of her slit and feel for her clit. You may barely experience it's presence. But even if you can't feel the tiny pearl, you can make it rise by licking the skin that covers it. Lick hard now and press into her skin. Gently pull the pussy lips away and flick your tongue against the clit, hood covered or not. Do this quickly. This should cause her legs to shudder.

When you sense she's getting up there toward orgasm, make your lips into an O and take the clit into your mouth. Start to suck gently and watch your lady's face for her reaction. If she can handle it, begin to suck harder. If she digs it, suck even harder. Go with her. If she lifts her pelvis into the air with the tension of her rising orgasm, move with her, don't fight her. Hang on, and keep your hot mouth on her clit. Don't let go. That's what she'll be saying too: 'Don't stop. Don't ever stop!' There's a reason for that, most men stop too soon.

Just like with cock sucking, this is something worth learning about and worth learning to do well. I know a man who's a lousy fuck, simply lousy, but he can eat pussy like nobody I know and he never has trouble getting a date. Girls are falling all over him. But back to your pussy eating session...

There's another thing you can do to intensify your woman's pleasure. You can finger-fuck her while she's enjoying your clit-licking talents. Before, during or after. She'll really like it. In addition to the erogenous zones surrounding her clit, a woman has another extremely sensitive area at the roof of her vagina. This is what you rub up against when you're fucking her.

Well, since your cock is pretty far away from your mouth, your fingers will have to do the fucking. Take two fingers. One is too skinny and three is too wide and therefore can't get deep enough. Make sure they're wet so you don't irritate her skin. Slide them inside, slowly at first, then a little faster. Fuck her with them rhythmically. Speed up only when she does. Listen to her breathing. She'll let you know what to do.

If you're sucking her clit and finger-fucking her at the same time, you're giving her far more stimulation than you would be giving her with your cock alone. So you can count on it that she's getting high on this. If there's any doubt, check her out for symptoms. Each woman is unique. You may have one who's nipples get hard when she's excited or only when she's having an orgasm. Your girl might flush red or begin to tremble. Get to know her symptoms and you'll be a more sensitive lover.

When she starts to have an orgasm, for heaven's sakes, don't let go of that clit. Hang in there for the duration. When she starts to come down from the first orgasm, press your tongue along the underside of the clit, leaving your lips covering the top. Move your tongue in and out of her cunt. If your fingers are inside, move them a little too, gently though, things are extremely sensitive just now. If you play your cards right, you'll get some multiple orgasms this way. A woman stays excited for a full hour after she's had an orgasm.

Do you realize the full impact of that information? The potential? One woman was clocked at 56 orgasms at one sitting. Do you know what effect you would have on a woman you gave 56 orgasms to? She'd be yours as long as you wanted her.

The last advice I have for you is this: After you've made her come, made her your slave by giving her the best head she's ever had, don't leave her alone just yet. Talk to her, stroke her body, caress her breasts. Keep making love to her quietly until she's come all the way down.

A man can get off and go to sleep in the same breath and feel no remorse, no sense of loss. But a woman by nature requires some sensitivity from her lover in those first few moments after sex. Oral sex can be the most exciting sexual experiences you can have. But it's what you make it. Take your time, practice often, pay attention to your lover's signals, and most of all, enjoy yourself.

Re:Cunniligus How To

[bobetov]

I was first embarassed by this post, then amused.

But thinking of all my female friends who've dated geeks, perhaps the most appropriate feeling would be... thankful.

:-)

Take notes, kids.

Re:Cunniligus How To

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, of all the comments ever posted on Slashdot, this is one of the most important ones. There is nothing like getting your chick off orally. There's something so powerful about it... to think that your tongue can command such responsiveness is beyond imagination. Thank you Cunnilingus man. I will heed your words and do my best to follow your example.

Re:Cunniligus How To

[Anonymous Coward]

>Thank you Cunnilingus man.

That was not a man, but a woman. However, she sounds like a lot of fun. And she was also right, but I have never gotten a gal off 56 times.

Re:Cunniligus How To

[Anonymous Coward]

I just had to read this post and comment on it, even tho the slashcode tryed to to stop me.
I've always thought that i would concentrate on oral- turns out the first girl i had a chance smelled to bad, so we just had sex- turns out i have some magic touch. we had already noticed it with massauge, but this was more important. i didn't get an exact count, but with just a day of practice, i gave her just short of a hundred orgasms. haven't been able to beat that yet, but thats because she comes for several minutes at a time now.
why did i tell you this? because thanks to your advice i might soon be as good oral!
oh, an you are so very right about them wanting you forever.

Does anyone find it ironic?

[Anonymous Coward]

NACI is "I can" spelled backwards.

Nice flame, please try again.

[Erris]

Arguing that ANY transfer of license at all is 'illegal' to bolster the 'open source' frenzy strikes me as very shortsighted.

I agree, those idiots in Redmond had better shut up. =:> I don't see the folks from Debian busting into grade schools looking for old versions of Emacs without documentation. The extortion of hundreds of thousands of dollars from US public school systems for "unregistered" and "pirated" coppies of Word and what not is a matter of public record. So, if second hand PC's get you that much trouble here, where M$'s avowed interest is the children, how do you think they will act overseas? The only frenzy I see is people reacting to the new blue screen of death, programs they pay for advertising at them, the mega improved clippy animations and quirkyness in general. They get a daily rise out of such insults. It's imposible to exaggurate the situation as people who don't have to deal with it all won't believe half of the truth.

Are we REALLY saying that if I found someone who had a LEGALLY LICENSED copy of Windows 95 from 1995, we could not engage in any sort of transaction to transfer the license (per whatever terms were stated in the Win95 original license) over to me?

Yes, Microsoft really says that, as was extensively documented here by Michael's excellent copyrant. Let's not forget the Naked PC effort, where M$ tried to quash the sales of any computer without an OS. Kinda goes to show you where there heart is.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Hate to be picky, but...

[stuffman64]

Well, only two typos in this post. First, it is "pushes," not "pushs." Secondly, you confused "than" with "then." Of course, nobody really cares in the long run... Anyways...

I'm glad to see more and more countries embracing open source software. Although many Americans have no problem shelling out $100 for WindozeXP (I certainly do, that is why don't), it is simply infeasable for someone living in a countries with average weekly salaries in the tens of dollars. Of course, these people won't be buying the computer for themselves. Rather, besides government agencies, the only computers would probably be in community "computer centers." With linux, it is not hard to localize a system to a country, and large-scale multi-user systems would not be so hard to manage.

Re:Hate to be picky, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, only two typos in this post. First, it is "pushes," not "pushs." Secondly, you confused "than" with "then." Of course, nobody really cares in the long run... Anyways...

Anyways is not a word. Anyway is plural already. Anyways is a double plural. Eg: Colour, singular, Colours, plural, Colourses, not a word.

Re:Hate to be picky, but...

[stuffman64]

Notice how I trailed off before I said that? I tried to indicate subversive sarcasm, but I guess it did not come off as such. If I meant "anyway" as a transitional word, I would have used it in the following paragraph.

Re:Hate to be picky, but...

[DrSpin]

You obviously think that Africa is like America - It isn't.

In much of Africa, lots of people earning $10 a month DO buy computers. They then rent them out to others. Its a great way to boost your income. Think of it: Millions of people without a word processor, and you have the only one in the street! Yeah! "Word processing done here - $1 per page" (Spell checks an extra $2.50).

The great thing is, 60% of your customers want you to type the same chainletter "get rich quick" scheme you typed for the last one, so you don't even need a big HD ;-}

Of course if you are on $10 per month, you have to borrow $30 from a loan shark, and can only afford a 486 with 640x480, but hell, you can still send spam with it! - Well you could, but the telephone hasn't worked since 1973, so no internet connection.

Interestingly enough, I am just off this minute to renovate a bunch of computers donated to a charity for Sierra Leone. I have FreeBSD 4.5 and NetBSD 1.5.2 install disks in my car!

And for those who believe the What they really need is food Line - No - there is plenty of food in most of Africa - the problem is that the economies don't work, so you can't find a way to buy it. This is generally because the legal systems don't work, which, itself, is nearly always the consequence of being colonised - which, after a few hundred years, gives you the idea that laws are something others do to you, and not something that helps you. This attitude, and this attitude alone, is responsible for 90% of poverty in Africa, and probably most poverty in other places too, and also most of the violence in the world.

Shouldn't that read

[scum-e-bag]

The use of open source in the 3rd/2nd world is one way to get around licensing costs - at least more honest then pirating.

Shouldn't that read

at least more honest than licensing

Re:Shouldn't that read

[Anonymous Coward]

only if you are so fcsking blind you can't see past the GPL, and see RMS as a god (instead of the big-headed twat)

YOU CAN WIN 600 DOLLARS!

[The BOFH Troll]

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To be taken off the list, ram your cock down CmdrTaco's throat.

Re:YOU CAN WIN 600 DOLLARS!

[Anonymous Coward]

To be taken off the list, ram your cock down CmdrTaco's throat.

Done!

Re:Ahahahahahaha! Sucker!

[trollin4jesus]

you have any idea of your count? i've seen you get more than just a couple.

Licensing Food

[ralian]

Slashdot Article:
NaCl: Gov't of South Africa Pushes Open Salt

sorry, too much chemistry classes;)

Re:Licensing Food

[darkonc]

NaCl: Gov't of South Africa Pushes Open Salt

Actually, that was one of the first openly revolutionary move on the part of Ghandi to free India from the British.

At the time, it was illegal to obtain salt -- except by purchase from government sources. In a tropical country, this is pretty close to taxing air.

His revolutionary move was to gather together thousands of people who picked up dried sea salt along the beach. The movie "Ghandi" portrays the government forces beating people as they moved forward to pick salt up off the ground.

This is, perhaps, where the multinationals want to go tomorrow.

wait a minute.

[7-Vodka]

South Africa hasn't had a NAZI government in a few years now... oh wait

Re:wait a minute.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they have switched to communism these days.

Re:Ahahahahahaha! Sucker!

[Pr0n K1ng]

I haven't ever kept count. It's probably over 100 by now. Or I could just be pulling #'s out of my ass.

Wow

[Burgundy Advocate]

First apartheid, now this.

Yes Folks, it's South Africa, with a History of Good Ideas!

Re:Wow

[a drunk]

And here we have Burgundy Advocate, with a history of sucking shit out of my ass.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

We should put your email address on some of the scat sites' mailing lists.

But perhaps instead the email address harvesting software software that Russian dude creates who was our hero last month will catch it if I demunge it:

daemon5@cyberspace.org sounds about right.

Wow! Africa! Amazing!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should change the linux mascot from the penguin to the zebra! WOWZARS!

I write code with a spear. Yep.

Yep.

Yes.

Yeah.

A spear.

wow. lol?

NOS!

[RICE_BOY_TYPE_R]

NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos!NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! NOS! nos! this text here is brought to you by Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.

Re:NOS!

[Anonymous Coward]

NOS! i put dual NOS on my bike... sucked.. i fell as i was going 400MPH, as I slowed, the bike kept going, the steat rammed me in the ass (i have goatse beat!).. and right through and ripped my fucking nuts off... SOB!

Pillaged ...

[bushboy]

"Don't kid yourself.
You are talking about Europeans in Africa for it was them who managed to create by far the most prosperous nation in Africa. It really worries my when I see current establishment drifting more and more towards far left socialist. "

I like to remain positive about South Africa - there's no reason for it to fail if we all pull together. What will make it fail is attitudes like yours - if there's too many people thinking the same way, then we've got a problem.

Sure, Europeans created a prosperous country, on the backs of black people - now it's time for those black people to take over and try to keep it going. The majority of Africa has failed in this - dismally, but so far, South Africa is doing relatively ok considering the challenges it faces.

We're in a unique postion in that we have a very different population grouping to most countries in Africa - whites, indians, coloureds and blacks.

This is possibly one of the reasons why South Africa remains fairly prosperous and may just make it through the tough times ahead, it's going to be a close call is my guess, but...

Gotta be positive !

Re:Pillaged ...

[Anonymous Coward]

South Africa cannot blame the white man for its current AIDS epidemic. Nor can it blame the white man for the common myth in South Africa that sex with a virgin cures AIDS. This has resulted in a horrible amount of child rape in South Africa this last year. If people do a news search on this they will see what I am talking about.

The president of SA even pushes the belief that AIDS and HIV have nothing in common. How is this the white mans fault? I had a friend go to South Africa with a group that passed out condoms and AIDS info. He was laughed at. After being there for a year he was attacked, robbed and had the sh*t beat out of him for being white.

If this is the jewel of africa, that whole continent is doomed.

Re:Pillaged ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You shoulda gone with your friend, so you could have your sweet shit kicked around too.

Re:Pillaged ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, Europeans created a prosperous country, on the backs of black people - now it's time for those black people to take over and try to keep it going.

ROTFLMAO!!! What about the people that were imported from the Indian subcontinent and other areas to help do a lot of the work? Blacks aren't the only ones in Africa.

At least they weren't as unlucky as the natives on the N. American continent. The empire builders decided to use them for laborers instead of just killing them outright. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, is left to the reader.

Re:Pillaged ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"... now it's time for those black people to take over and try to keep it going."

A noble concept, but it falls over due to the evident fact the most of the "black people" who have taken over, have done so with eyes only for percs, and not on the tasks that need to be accomplished in order to keep our beautiful country afloat.

Each time we lose another Rand to the Dollar I become more cynical. I don't see anyone in government trying to rectify this. As long as they have their govenmental allowance, they happy. Why should they give a sh*t if Joe Blow has to sell a kidney to buy a loaf of bread.

Don't even get me started on petrol... what the hells up with that??!??!??!?!?!!?!

You'd think that, wouldn't you?

[Slickoil]

Your an idiot. Grade 10 World Studies. 1st World-Well Developed Countries (USA, Canada, Britain, and until it's collapse, U.S.S.R)The leaders in the world. 2nd World-Mid-Developed Countries (S.A. countries, along with South Africa, China)The followers in the world. 3rd World-Under Developed Countries (Ethiopia, and those other small african nations)The hopeless in the world. It is now politically incorrect to term nations as above. They are now to be refered (last time I heard) to as 'Developed' and 'Developing'.

Re:You'd think that, wouldn't you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your an idiot.

A rather self-defeating remark, don't you think ?

Re:You'd think that, wouldn't you?

[Twylite]

You're (not 'your') an idiot ;) Grade 12 Geography. First world nations include those you listed, EXCLUDING the USSR, plus most of Europe, Austalia, Japan and others. Second world is a category which was reversed for the USSR and communist nations! Third world included all underdeveloped nations. Incidently there are also "forth" and "fifth" world classifications, which served to break up the "third world" category more precisely.

It is an issue of some contention as to whether SA is "first" or "third" world. It is generally considered to be a duality - much of our infrastructure and cities is first world, but the problems of poverty and service delivery are typical of third world nations.

Re:You'd think that, wouldn't you?

[blackwings]

Actualy, there are two different widely used 1st/2nd/3rd deffinitions. The oldest that was invented by two economist in Algeria, as a reaction to the onesided and prejudical view of industrialized versus development countries. They divided the world in; 1st world: superpowers (USA, USSR). 2nd: developed countries (Europe west & east, Japan, New Zealand etc). 3d: the rest. This view was popularized in the third world by a lot of third world leaders and thinker such as Mao Zedung. During the sixties it was even popular among a lot of left winged groups. Another view also was developed during the same time as a rection to or perhaps a misunderstanding of the third Algerian model; 1st world: Industrialized countries in the West 2nd: Industrialized countries in the East 3d: Undeveloped countries There has been several other models but these two models are the two most comman ones.

Re:You'd think that, wouldn't you?

[codeButcher]

So this would make SA a Second world country, what with all the communists running the place (into the ground).

Re:You'd think that, wouldn't you?

[drwho]

This whole first world, second world, etc. naming is a bunch of crap. Some people have this need to make a few broad categories for complex and variable things and try to rationalize their world. They have to pull the wool over everyone's eye's including their own. I refer to ideas such as 'economic class', 'personality types', and '4 worlds' (yes I was taught in school there were 4).

These people would have you think that they were scientists, isolating elements based on their measurable properties!

The truth of the matter is, that it is counter-productive to use these 'pop-science' categories. For instance, what 'world' would South Korea belong in? It's a mixture of a highly advanced industrial economy with holdovers from a feudal agricultural society. It doesn't really fit the model of 'four worlds'.

Several years ago, I was talking about this exact subject with a friends over some beers. And we figured out the REAL meaning of the '4 worlds':

1) colonial powers
2) non-colonial countries
3) until recently, colonies
4) those places about to be colonized

Now, this may not make sense to you, but it was a funny bit of truth to those of us at the table who had the '4 worlds' BS rammed down out throats in school.

Re:You'd think that, wouldn't you?

[cyber-vandal]

Could you please provide specific examples of South African communists in positions of power?

Re:You'd think that, wouldn't you?

[codeButcher]

The previous president, Nelson Mandela, is inter alia notorious for his booklet "How to be a good communist." The current president, Thabo Mbeki, joined the South African Communist Party in 1962 and served on both its Central Committee and its Politburo. Then one could look at cabinet ministers, govenors of the Reserve Bank, Commisioners of Police, etc. etc. None of this should however be really surprising given the ruling party's (ANC) decades-long affiliation with the SACP.

not exactly

[GePS]

"these terms have a specific political meaning and they're not being used correctly here."

these terms have more than a political meaning, they have a socio-economic meaning as well. In order to be a 1st world nation, that nation must be a "modern" country. In order to me modern (as defined by the textbook I had for Comparative Politics last semester) one must have attained or be close to attaining the following items:

1.A quality infrastructure (roads, rails, etc.)

2.technology/science/reason (as opposed to religion controlling information)

3.urbanization

4.internatl. trade

5.capatalist/market economy (although on the surface many African nations have a market economy, it is usually highly "regulated" by various strong men)

6.rule by a sovereign majority (can we say military dictator?)

7.emphasis on individual freedom as opposed to enhancement of group/leader of group (again, can we say military dictator?)

8.centralization of government (for the most part the countries in Africa have this)

9.national conciousneses (this is still a long way off with all the tribal identities in Africa)

So, in actuality, many of the African nations are third world, and most of the rest 2nd world countries due to the level of (most often the lack of) modernization.

Re:not exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

You my friend are an absolute idiot. When some one makes an informed comment you would be well advised to consider it before spewing some bit of sillyness you think you remembered from your high school history class.

Re:not exactly

[mlk]

woot, the UK is not first world....

Re:not exactly

[Twylite]

Let's see. In SA we have (1), (2) [at least at local/national government level, and for many people], (3), (4), (5), (6), and (8). (7) is debatable because while there is legal respect for individualily, many ethnic groups believe strongly in an "elder", even if they have the right not to. (9) depends on who you ask - the strongest split in SA is still along racial lines.

Re:not exactly

[Isofarro]

I'd have to disagree on 5 (capatalist/market economy) somewhat. With four companies (Anglo-American, Rembrant, can't remember the other two) controlling 75% of available stock, its not a true capitalist economy.

Comparing the road and rail infrastructures -SA's
road network and quality is so much higher than the UK, but the UK's rail is by far superior to SAs.

Its difficult to classify SA, and I always think of it as a meld of 1st and 3rd world technologies - it is as you suggest, a duality. Open source is the tool to lower the barrier of moving third world stuff to be competitive in a first world arena.

Re:not exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Point is, its not improving, rather on the contrary.

Re:not exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm..look at Finland. Without Nokia and Tieto there's hardly anything left. Is Finland a market economy? - cleary your view of a market economy is warped.
/m

Open source not for the developing world?

[WIAKywbfatw]

(Before you right this off as a troll, please read on and think about how different your lifestyle is from that of the majority of the people in the world, who have no access to a telephone line, let alone the internet.)

OK, it's a no-brainer that open source software would be a good fit for governments that, in many cases, have problems feeding, clothing and housing their populations.*

But how, practically is this achievable on anything other than an administrative level? Running Linux and Star Office rather than Microsoft Windows and Office and employing sysadmins with the relative skills is all doable in the halls of power but how can open source be brought to the people?

In countries where many rural areas lack running water, let alone electricity, is it realistic to hope that the open source movement can help the common man?

OK, so a little off the government's licensing costs can't hurt but will it really make a meaningful difference? Not to Joe Average it won't.

If there was some way of getting cheap (second hand?) no-thrills PCs to local schools in a developing country then I think open source software could make a difference but, for all sorts of reasons, this just isn't practical.

For one thing, even open source software requires support (and so does the hardware it runs on). You might find all the support you need online but someone who lives miles from the nearest telephone is going to find it a little harder.

I'd love it for it to be possible, but it's not. The real world just doesn't work that way.

In my humble opinion, hoping for open source software to take off in the developing world before it happens in the developed world is a pipe dream.

(* No, I don't put South Africa in this category. Thanks to it's mineral riches, it's one of the few countries in Africa that can stand on its own two feet. It's a pity that the interest payments alone on crippling debt stops other african nations from being so self-sufficient, but that's another story.)

Re:Open source not for the developing world?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I am South African, and I think that this is great!!

You are absolutely right - promoting Open Source initially will not affect the average man on the street (most of whom are either unemployed or live below the poverty line)

It will also not make much of a difference to corporates who are pirating software left and right - however it might make them think.

The real issue is that if we can save ZAR63m (approx US$5.5m) (IIRC this was the amount quoted) then we can use this to build low-cost housing (@ approx R5 000-10 000 each) - an extra 6300 houses will help immensely!!

We could also use this to reduce foreigh debt - thus saving interest payments into the future - strengthening the economy and providing more money for housing, education, etc.

So although the average man-on-the-street will not see Linux desktops in his immediate future, he might see a house with running water and live Electricity - a huge improvement on people living on the streets, and burning candles/parrafin for light and heat/cooking.

Food for thought!!

David R

Re:Open source not for the developing world?

[Twylite]

South Africa is fairly unique amongst developing (esp. African) nations. We have an excellent infrastructure for transportation and communication in most parts of the country. While many people do not have their own telephone lines, there are ongoing projects to remedy this situation.

But far more interesting is the fact that these are a huge number of people living in ghetto-type conditions with no basic services, who are using the cellular networks to communicate. This goes to show that there is money and intent available for electronic communication.

There are several existing projects to get PCs into underdeveloped schools. In fact the hardware side of the projects is quite successful, but they are struggling because of the cost of software and the lack of teachers with computer experience. Linux is not suitable in such environments until it is easy to install and administer with little or no experience.

One of SA's biggest barriers to bringing "computing to the masses" is the commercial attitude: SA is extremely loyal to Microsoft, and to leading-edge technology. Technology more than a couple of years old becomes nearly impossible to get. Few wholesalers stock chips under a Celeron/Duron 800, or RAM chips less than 128Mb. They perceive that there is money to be made from companies, and not from supplying cheaper hardware to more "charatible" causes.

SA suffers from a "nothing but the best" syndrome, which affects development. It is generally unacceptable to provide second-class solutions as an interim measure while working on a long-term solution. This means that, for example, a project to get computers into schools will involve building a secure building for the computers (many poor schools are prefab or have degraded buildings), and the provision of networked multimedia computers.

Having said this, it is obviously not the way to go. There needs to be an attitude change and an acceptance of older technology, alternative technology or interim solutions.

Actually the availability of communications is not important in the use of computing in developing nations. Computers can be used "offline" as teaching aids, and this is probably where investment should be targetted. Education standards in SA are dropping, there is a massive adult illiteracy rate, and computing skills (required in many industries) are lacking.

An obvious and useful proposal would be to develop and mass produce cheap hardware which can run OpenSource software, and start developing (locally) teaching aids in all national languages (we have 11 of them :

Incidently ... the mining sector only accounted for 6% of GDP in 1999 (worldinformation.com), Tourism for 4% and agriculture for 4%. What makes SA an economic power in Africa is its NON-reliance on mineral resources.

Re:Open source not for the developing world?

[BluBrick]

But how, practically is this achievable on anything other than an administrative level? Running Linux and Star Office rather than Microsoft Windows and Office and employing sysadmins with the relative skills is all doable in the halls of power but how can open source be brought to the people?

The trickle-down effect is how. If it's policy that OSS be used in government offices, that policy then permeates to schools, libraries, police and armed forces, hospitals, and all manner of government and semi-government infrastructure. Also, anyone who wants to exchange documents with the government needs to do so in open and accessible formats, ruling out MS-Word, MS-Excel and similar proprietary formats (are there any other word processors or spreadsheets left which still use closed formats?) Get rid of the need to create and read those proprietary file formats and you remove the single largest incentive for license evasion*. OK so that may not be a huge number of people, but does become a significant proportion of those people who have any contact with computers.

* License evasion kinda sounds like tax evasion, which many people feel is a soft and victimless crime, just like copying copyrighted software. How about we use that instead of the harsher, more violent "piracy", eh?

Re:Open source not for the developing world?

[BlackEmperor]

>Thanks to it's mineral riches, it's one of the >few countries in Africa

actually much of western africa has large mineral wealth (Angola, DRC, Nigeria).

these minerals (esp diamonds) only fuel wars, they do not bring prosperity.

Re:Open source not for the developing world?

[Teun]

The infrastructure to bring pirated CD's into even the most remote parts of the world is clearly present, the same path is available to OS software.
There is indeed a feeling in many of the lesser developed countries that anything offered to them what is less than the best (=most expensive) is another way of the West to stay ahead.

It is papers like the one we discuss that could possibly break this foolish notation in the case of OS.
The resources and intellect to use and expand on OS is certainly available, it only needs to become *Sexy*

Re:Open source not for the developing world?

[Caid Raspa]

I hate the idea that piss-poor countries are spending some of their money on software licenses. That money could be used for the many things you mention (running water, electricity) or fighting AIDS or malaria. The 'shareholder value' of the richest is obviously more important than the lives of the poor. No wonder software piracy is widespread in poor countries.

But how, practically is this achievable on anything other than an administrative level? Running Linux and Star Office rather than Microsoft Windows and Office and employing sysadmins with the relative skills is all doable in the halls of power but how can open source be brought to the people?

In the poorest countries, the computers are used mainly in the 'halls of power'. Switching to open source is much easier if the entire government has less PC:s than an average US School.

A few years ago UK donated some PC:s to the police in a small West African country that was just starting to recover from a civil war. They would have preferred chairs, desks or pencils, as the police station had no electricity.

A friend of mine visited a university in Mocambique (sp?) a few years ago. There were three computers in an university of several thousand students.

OK, so a little off the government's licensing costs can't hurt but will it really make a meaningful difference? Not to Joe Average it won't

The poorest countries have an education and health budget of the order a few USD per capita. Any difference is important when playing with very small budgets. Savings of 10k$ could mean vaccinating thousands of kids against some common disease, saving a few hundred lives. Or spending that 10k$ in condoms or education might save a few hundred people from AIDS. This would be a small difference, but it is human lives we are talking about.

Statistically, the life of Joe Average might be meaningless. However, Joe Average would hardly agree with that.

For one thing, even open source software requires support (and so does the hardware it runs on). You might find all the support you need online but someone who lives miles from the nearest telephone is going to find it a little harder.

If you live miles from the nearest phone, getting online for support is just as feasible as calling the "insert-company-here" helpdesk, and hearing that you have to download the latest driver/patch from their Flash-ridden homepage. You have to rely on local documentation and user manuals, and these are just as crappy on both commercial and open source.

Re:Open source not for the developing world?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Some interesting points and your example of the computer donation to a rebuilding police force clearly indicates what I was trying to say - there are major barriers other than the cost of a software license or two that prevent OSS being widely adopted in the developing world.*

Where people don't have the basics (PCs, electricity) what help is it discussing the details (software licensing)? It's like arguing whether a blind man's bedroom should be painted white or cream.

Yes, the saved software licensing costs at a governmental level can do some good but, let's be honest here, many developing world countries are run by less than egalitarian governments more interested in keeping themselves in power than they are in helping the common man.**

Few, if any lives, will be saved by transitioning from close source to open source but I'll take few over none - a point that I should have made in my original comment.

We agree that, in truly remote conditions, tech support is going to be a serious issue for both OSS and CSS. My original point wasn't that this was a disadvantage of OSS but rather that support always needs to be factored in.

Most people in the developed world are quite happily have their videos blinking 00:00, even though they have the step-by-step documentation that shows them how to set the time and date properly. I've yet to see any Linux distribution (or any version of Windows for that matter) supplied with documentation truly suited for complete novices. When forced to, some people will get stuck in and force themselves to learn but some won't, through fear of "breaking" something, etc. Good documentation is a must, but even the best documentation is no substitute for the occasional helping hand of a more experienced user.

Some serious food for thought for all of us.

(* Again, I'm not talking about South Africa here, I'm talking about the developing world - the poorest of the poor. South Africa doesn't fit into this category so feel free to mod me off-topic if you must, but this seems to be a nice discussion thread so why spoil things?)

(** A generalisation perhaps, but it's true in many cases. Unfortunately, democracy, free and fair elections and transparency of government aren't always the norm in the developing world, whereas dictatorships, opression and wide-scale corruption seem to be. It's a sad world we live in.)

Re:Ahahahahahaha! Sucker!

[trollin4jesus]

yeah, it really sounds like the latter option.

100 would be a fuck-tonne.

Re:Ahahahahahaha! Sucker!

[Pr0n K1ng]

Okay, so now I'm kind of curious. I just checked my comments page, and there are 6 First Posts in the 24 comments listed. Now, I have posted roughly 210 comments with this nick. So for shits and giggles, I am going to multiply 6*8 and come up with 48 first posts. That could be closer to being right.

Re:I NEED TO MAKE SOME CASH, SO I WILL POST SPAM H

[MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM]

Click harder. Punch the mouse. Or scream at the monitor, especially if there is people around.

SEAT*

[Anonymous Coward]

good thing im AC, else I might feel stupid for that typo

booty! BUST!booty! BUST!booty! BUST!booty! BUST!bo

[Anonymous Coward]

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Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.

BEEP!

Re:I NEED TO MAKE SOME CASH, SO I WILL POST SPAM H

[Reikk]

Please add me to the list. Thanks!

Re:I NEED TO MAKE SOME CASH, SO I WILL POST SPAM H

[Anonymous Coward]

PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU ARE NOT A RECRUITER, OR HIRING MANAGER PLEASE IGNORE THIS EMAIL. DON'T WORRY YOU ARE NOT ON A LIST AND WILL NOT RECIEVE ANOTHER EMAIL, THERE IS NO NEED TO ASK FOR A REMOVAL.

Individual Employment Seeker, Not An Agency.

I am an experienced IT Manager, and Consultant interested in joining your team.

I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a little about my background.

With over 10 years in Information Technology, I have had the opportunity to be exposed to
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with the knowledge to identify the best possible solution.

To see a complete resume, project summaries, and references please visit:
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Resume Highlights:

Education

4 years - University of Michigan, Dearborn, 1995
BS Computer Science / Minor: Electrical Engineering

2 years - Tekhnical College - Livonia Career/Technical College, 1991
AA Computer Information Systems

Certifications

PMI Institute, Certified Project Manager
Microsoft MCSE+I
MSF Certified Project Management Method
CISCO - CCNA
Novell CNE 4.11 NetWare with GroupWise 5.5
Compaq ASE/HP PC/Server (Prolinea, Prosignia, HP6000 etc.)
AIIM Certified Imaging Specialist
In progress: CISCO - CCIE

Industry Recognition

Presenting speaker at COMDEX to introduce new Wireless Applications, 1997
Recognized as co-developer of new infra-red "muxing" technology, 1998
Lectured at University of Michigan School of Engineering. Topic: "New Millennium Systems,"
1996
Lectured at University of Miami, College of Engineering. Topic: "Wireless Computing: How
We Got Here," 1998

Technical Summary

Project Management Methodologies

MSF (Microsoft Solutions Framework)
PMI (Project Management Institute)
Harvard and Stanford studies on project/personnel management
Operating Systems

Microsoft: 3.xx, '95, '98, ME, NT 3.51, 4.0, and 2000, DOS
Macintosh MAC-OS Systems 6 - 8
IBM OS2
IBM S36 mainframe
Unix, and Linux (Red Hat)
JAVA OS

Hardware

PC construction and circuit designs ranging from the 8086 to current technologies; also IBM
S36 and AS/400.
HW/SW/Design of Telxon and Symbol Pen/Voice-based Mobile Computing Solutions
Design and Implementation of RF (Radio) Technology in the workplace. Example: Wireless
LAN, Data Collection, P.O.S., and Route Automation.
Wide variety of HUBS, Routers, Firewalls, and Switches, including Cisco, Bay, CheckPoint,
and Ascend

Software (brief)

Microsoft Suite of Products: Office, BackOffice Suite, Project, Exchange 5.5
Lotus Notes
Various Document Imaging Systems: MIMS3000, Viewstar, FileNet

Databases

MS Access
MS SQL 6.5, 7.0
Oracle 8i with various add-ons including: Spatial, Business Objects, Internet File System
Fox Pro
File Maker Pro

Development Tools

COBOL/RMCOBOL
RPG II
C/C++
Java
Macromedia DreamWeaver
Macromedia Flash
Visual InterDev
J2EE
Assembly
Basic
Visual Basic 6.0
IBM WebSphere v. 3.5
Pen Right! (For use with mobile computers, and touch screen applications)

To see a complete resume, project summaries, and references please visit:
http://speedbump.dyndns.org/personal/resume/inde x. html

AIDS?

[the_furies]

The way AIDS is getting out of control in South Africa, you'd think they's be more concerned about OPEN SORES!

Hahahahahaha...hahaha....ha...

Re:AIDS?

[Original AIDS Monkey]

After 25 years, the Subsaharan Negroes have not yet made the mental connection between having sex with dying hookers and getting AIDS. I don't see how any amount of awareness-raising can overcome the stupidity of these people.

The African governments should change their AIDS-fighting strategy, and start luring people away from hookers with bananas. There's no other way to stop the Donkey Kong race from doing "ooga booga" with any female they see.

wrong!!!

[Max the Merciless]

I think you'll find the good old USA had a system of aparteid right up until the 1960s! Some would say current drug laws etc are in fact defacto aparteid. And then there was slavery before that...

Australia also had aparteid, and the Europeans basically invented slave trading. While the Arabs currently carry on this fine tradition in Southern Sudan.

I'm not defending South African aparteid, but lets not rewrite history "BlackHawkDown" style, and pretend it was only them!

Re:wrong!!!

[nomadic]

Then why did you put the word "wrong!!" in the subject line? Just because other countries had systems of apartheid doesn't invalidate what the first poster said.

The difference between South Africa and the rest of the countries is they made a concentrated effort to remove it years ago, while up until recently South Africa still followed this barbaric practice. South Africa's system was also was a lot more pervasive than in either the US or Australia.

Re:wrong!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry dude, but the Arabs were involved in the slave trade long before the Europeans found a use for them in the 'New World'. Before you get all hyper and say "But Islam doesn't allow that..", you need to sit down and open your brain. Islam doesn't allow lots of actions IF the other people are Muslims. If not, then it's been interpreted that they can do whatever the fuck they want to them. From what I've read, SA is probably worse now than it was during aparteid, just like many social indicators were better for black americans before the 1960s.

Also, The Guardian only had it partially correct. The raid was the result of a tip from an informant that was also working for the other side. They were led into an ambush by locals and some of the people that are currently being hunted. It's too bad the people in charge of the entire operation were being hamstrung by the administration at the time.

Re:wrong!!!

[Advocadus Diaboli]

Just because other countries had systems of apartheid doesn't invalidate what the first poster said.

Yes, it does. You should be aware, that the government of South Africa changed, that means that now the government is made of people that never were supporting apartheid. So its wrong to make a sort of link between the badness of apartheid and using open source.

I'm from Germany for example and I would be really angry if you would call me "Nazi" just because long time ago the german government was made of Nazis, but that was long before I was born. So its just wrong to link the actual decision with history.

Speaking of history: I don't know if you ever visited South Africa. I did, several times and also in times where they had apartheid. But I didn't see suffering black people even then, because there were none. TV reports made us think that the black and the withe people of South Africa were sort of "hating" each other and that there was practically one side of the road for blacks and one for whites. The reality showed different to me, they just lived on the same place, but with little interaction. The "worst" thing I noticed on my trip was a sign on a beach that said "for whites only".

No, I don't want to defend apartheit, but people should be aware, that the really bad thing that the South African government did was that they put apartheid to their laws. Apartheid in a form of keeping distance to members of another culture always existed because it exists in the head of the people. Looking around to "multicultural states" like Afghanistan or Israel/Palaestina shows me that it still exists everywhere.

And yes I'm happy that South Africa is going for open source. It will help them to save money and it will teach them to use their brains and that's much more worthy than saving money.

Re:wrong!!!

[dadragon]

Actually, the original poster said the S.A. invented apartheid. It didn't, he was wrong on that point. IIRC, Canada still has apartheid. Just slightly, though.

Canadian Indians have certain rights that non-indians don't have. Indians can hunt out of season, they don't need to get a gun licence. Until recently there were laws that applied to Indians that didn't apply to non-indians (Recently being the last 20 years) there may well still be.. but I don't recall at the moment. I seem to remember the Indian Act, 1986, being the last Act of Parliament concerning Indians.

Re:Dropped "Linux" because the kernel doesn't matt

[KewlPC]

About your sig: it should actually read "Oppinions are like assholes: everybody's got one and they all stink."

This is just silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is too hard for the average, well-educated American consumer. What makes you think a spear-chucking, HIV positive nigger will do any better?

Re:I NEED TO MAKE SOME CASH, SO I WILL POST SPAM H

[c00lant]

to all of you posting your stuff to this fucking idiot, and i say it in the nicest way.. How the hell do you know he's legit? his email is fake and promotes the hatred of linux. and "claims" he is Linus Tolvolds LOL. L.Torvalds linuxisforfags@yahoo.com)[hahaha] : "Click Here To Start" gee, on text, wow. so amazing how it does nothing. now im not trying to Troll, or flame. But i already saw someone post their information and this is a scam or stupid joke. So i just want to point the facts out and hope that no one falls for this and posts their info as i said i had already seen. -c00lant

This is news?

[prizzznecious]

Since when does Slashdot cover this open-source stuff? I, for one, am appalled by this editorial mischief.

perl -p -e

[Dwonis]

s/pirating/copyright infringement/g;

Hehe, way to go SA.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am from South Africa(in Pretoria) and we have a very active Linux and *BSD grou running, checkout
www.glug.org.za (Gauteng Linux users group)
www.clug.org.za (Cape Linux users group)

I am writing this message on a FreeBSD 4.5 box.
I just hope in the future our Goverment will
do the same.

P.S. Anyone in SA know how to get a Linux/PS2 in SA?

- Phz

One of the responses...

[bob@dB.org]

from http://www.naci.org.za/d02a.cfm?item=205

Software has no intrinsic value. The value it has is that which is perceived by the user. Is a copy of Windows XP worth a family of four not eating for a month? Not to me... Is a copy of Microsoft Office worth two families of four not eating for a month? Not to me... Proprietary software is about revenue generation, not capability. Furthermore, there is nothing which says free software cannot co-exist with proprietary. If a particular capability requires proprietary, by all means, get a copy. But, does every capability require proprietary software? Certainly not.

The will and determination of the South African people has survived much greater hardship than software bugs with no answers, or support. The question to ask yourself here is: Will the South African Government be willing to pay $120USD per incident for software bugs that will likely still have no answer? In my experience, if there is a solution it is, "upgrade to the latest version for another $199USD."

The greater good is that which serves the most people. If you can make a case for proprietary that serves more people, then that's what you should do. However, I do not think that is possible, given the freedom (from corporate America) inherent in free and open source software.

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute...

Finally! a positive Step.

[inflex]

Now, if South African immigrations (HomeAffairs) would stop throwing out all the professionals in the name of "Affirmative Action" (Read Aparthaid, but the other way around) perhaps the country could defeat the current trend of the Southern Sahara African countries.

It's a lovely country (South Africa), but they have to stop pointing the finger of blame for everything that goes wrong back to the pre '90's and start understanding that skin colour -really- doesn't make a difference.

I GOTTA SAY IT WAS A GOOD DAY!

[L.Torvalds]

I invented Linux, but since it is open source, I do not make much money off of it. Please support open source, and me!

Re:I GOTTA SAY IT WAS A GOOD DAY!

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU NEED TO GET MORE BLACK PEOPLE ON YOUR TEAM LINUS!!! Since they are SO good at picking and cleaning cotton, just think of how good they will be picking and cleaning those bugs out of your code!!!! AND!! they will steal it while you arent looking, and sell it at high prices on the streets.. so you get more publicity! YOu can have them pay you %55 of the profits, oh wait, your white and taking an extra %5. racisim.

ENJOY
-- Pan fucking tera =)

Education to recompile the kernel ?

[Dwain_Snyders]

Get off your high horse, please. Reading the documentation for 5 minutes is pretty much all it takes to recompile the kernel. If you're using FreeBSD it's even easier since the system is far cleaner and better documented. But assuming you're talking about Linux, what is so difficult about it? As a South African myself (now living in the United States) I think attitudes like yours are quite funny. You say that "They don't use open source stuff", which is true, but no more true than any other country, African or not, 1st world or not. People expect computers to be easy to use. They don't expect cars to be easy to use, they accept that they have to learn about clutch control and gear changing, speed limits, etc, but they expect to just be able to sit down and start using a computer without knowing anything about it - even if they are in the I.T industry. That's where the problem lies. If these people bothered to read the documentation that comes with various systems, they would be able to use them quite comfortably. The only education required to use computers is the ability to read the language in which the documentation is written.

Re:Education to recompile the kernel ?

[Isofarro]

You say that "They don't use open source stuff", which is true, but no more true than any other country,

Accessibility and visibility of open source is a good indicator to its presence. Take an example:

Walk into a top South African computer store - like Incredible Connection - look for a copy of Linux or BSD. I tried this in early December 2001, nothing.

Walk into "Books etc" in the UK, there's a brand new copy of Suse 7.3 on the shelves (both personal and professional). Most computer shops (MicroAnvika) have a tidy range of linux distros (Redhat, Mandrake, Suse).

Remember, you just need to buy one copy, and that can be installed on all the computers in the world without paying extra - and get support for it. But its that first step SA hasn't achieved yet - and this document can be that first step.

My introduction to Open Source was at Wits University (Johannesburg, SA) - but I was fortunate to have a friend that knew about these sort of things.

Without doubt, at grassroots level, Open source is there - but the stamp of approval (the "will not reduce the availability of Open Source") will open many more eyes than geek-speak alone. It will "legitimise" Open source in a country where Microsoft has an overwhelming dominance.

Re:Education to recompile the kernel ?

[m4g02]

Sorry if i ofended you in some way, i cant speak for South Africa myself since i have never been there, but i have been on Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, and many other 3rd world countries, im from a 3rd world country myself, so i have experience enough about what im talking about.

I know persons who works on the systems deparment and cant compile a linux kernel, in fact they almost run when someone say Linux, once one of them told me to stay away from that *crazy* stuff.

Re:Education to recompile the kernel ?

[Pxtl]

Argentina, Mexico and Cuba are third worlkd countries? Well fuck you too.

Re:Education to recompile the kernel ?

[cyber-vandal]

Spare us the three year old arguments please. Compilation of the Linux kernel has not been necessary for at least that length of time.

It is an option, that's all.

AMEN - Mod Parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks

Poor example :-\

[mi]

This same country has insisted for a while, that AIDS (the disease) is not caused by the HIV (the virus) -- contrary to the established opinion world over.

So, now they claim "Open Source" is better, huh? Well, they are just lunatics down there...

Re:Poor example :-\

[Anonymous Coward]

please note that the Government's official stance on HIV and AIDS does in no way reflect the opinion of our country's health workers, most of whom believe there is a direct link between the virus HIV and AIDS.

Several South African newspapers, such as Independant Online ( http://www.iol.co.za ) and the Mail and Guardian ( http://www.mg.co.za ) often cover the divisions between Government and the health sector. Also, please consult the webpages of the South African Medical Research Council ( http://www.mrc.ac.za ). The MRC recently published a report on HIV and AIDS who's release the Government tried to prevent.

Re:Poor example :-\

[Anonymous Coward]

apples and oranges you fruitcake troll

Supporting Language

[Renraku]

Does Linux support the South African language of clicks and whistles? clickclickbeeptapclurk 'hello world' beepbeeptapclurkclickclick! Spell Checker: 'hello world' to 'clickbeepbeeptapclurkclurkclick'

Salt

[global_diffusion]

NaCl: Gov't of South Africa Pushes Open Source

Alright, who else read this title and wondered why South Africa was taking orders from a dipole molecule? My font makes a capitol I look like a lowercase l. I need to get some sleep...

Open Standards - not just open source ...

[ukryule]

The first & most concrete recommendation in this report is:

1. Make Open Standards a non-negotiable base for ICT in the Public Sector.

This is interesting, because it stops tie-in to one company - without having to mandate open source. So, no use of MS Word for publishing documents ...

However, if you're proposing to use an open standard for e.g. word processing, what do you choose? HTML is fine for publishing, RTF is too basic for complex documents. Is there actually an open, widely accepted WP standard which you could use? Or are they only mandating open standards for publication and not for internal use (given that the report was written in Word this is possible)?

There are alrady KDE i18n files for Xhosa

[buchanmilne]

they have been in the official KDE release since 2.2.2. Koffice is in the process of being translated. Mozilla and OpenOffice will be next.

A spell checker for african languages may be more work.

Digital divide?

[Bnonn]

As an ex-South African, I feel I'm qualified to say that "digital divide" is a good euphamism for "corruption".

Open source isn't going to help South Africa out of the dirt--not in the slightest teeny way. See, in South Africa, on the one hand you've got extremely rich people, or people just getting by (still mostly white, but the tide seems to be turning), who have all their computers and software, pirated or no, internet access, the whole toot. Try irc.shadowfire.org#zagamers or #chknhd or something if you don't believe me.

On the other hand you've got about 15 or 20 million other people, mostly still black, who have absolutely nothing. Mostly, they keep having absolutely nothing, living their joyous lives in their tin shacks and stealing car batteries to power their TVs because certain rich people don't want to be unrich, and keep those strings a-pulling to make sure that the status quo is maintained. And don't think that those rich people are all South African. Three US corporations (sadly I can't quote which ones) make more money every year than the entire .za GDP. Usian corporations blatantly play the .za market and milk it for all it's worth (no surprise there, although no anti-Usianism is intended), and the South African corporations are about as pure as the undriven yellow snow in comparison if you get my drift.

Open source? Who cares? The only people who can use it at the moment or for the forseeable future are the people who are already forking out R20,000 or more for a new computer every year anyway.

Re:Digital divide?

[Isofarro]

Open source? Who cares? The only people who can use it at the moment or for the forseeable future are the people who are already forking out R20,000 or more for a new computer every year anyway.

Large South African companies, such as banks, make it a habit to upgrade their computers every two years or so. These old computers are scrapped, or sold cheaply to employees - but mostly without software - and you don't get the software licenses.

Open source gives someone the _opportunity_ of legally acquiring software for a PC without restrictive licensing fees. This makes old computers that much more accessible to the general (and electrified) public.

Note, I said "opportunity" which means people can decide for themselves, and not have it forced upon them. Your opinion is that people won't bother - I disagree. By lowering the cost of owning a computer, you have a better potential to get people involved in using one.

Yes, these people will need support. That's what user groups are for. That can be done informally friend to friend, or child to parent.

Take these discarded PCs to a not-for-profit volunteer organisation that will install and set-up the PC with Open source software. This will create a range of PC's that can be delivered and powered on, and used.

Heck, South Africa has already realised the benefits of low cost computers using a television instead of a monitor - they can do this just as easily.

Re:Digital divide?

[bshuttleworth]

Ummmm... As a current South African I think a counter-comment is in order here. Yes, South Africa is a country with big divides, most of them economic, some of the racial. But there are two schools of thought on the way forward: either you do something, or you sit around going "oh dear, look, we have problems, noooooo...."

No prizes for guessing which school of thought is actually going to help.

Who cares about Open Source? Everyone should: schools do (because they can barely afford the computers), libraries do (see schools) and companies should (because, frankly, it gives you an economic advantage over people forking out money for licenses).

Why do schools care? Because an awful lot of people can't speak/read/learn in English. How does Open Source help? Read the document, and look at the translation project. All of a sudden people who had to battle through arcane English ideas to use a computer can do it in their own language. Read about the TSF and its schooltool project, library projects and so on. OpenSoure can make a huge difference to a lot of people.

And before anyone says "ooooh, we've got so many problems" read a history book - every "1st world" country once had a Genie co-efficient that would make an economist blanch. How did they change that? By giving everyone the (a) opportunity and (b) tools to make a difference in their lives and the community around them.

OpenSource, who cares? I care. Students everywhere care. And anyone who believes that acting to benefit a community is worthwhile cares.

I guess you are not counting us ...

[buchanmilne]

Since we run about 6 linux servers (including a samba domain controller, openldap server, postfix on our mail host etc) and 50 Windows 2000 desktops (all fully licensed), and the one SQL 2000 box we need.

Linux desktops are coming soon.

Maybe /. posters should do some research on the country before posting comments like this.

There are lots of businesses that pirate software, and that is exactly why open source needs to be pushed as a legal alternative (not really a cheaper alternative) to free (as in beer) (possibly proprietary) software.

��ض

[Anonymous Coward]

Î ÈÈÐ ÖÒËÐ M ÁS

Thats Cause U Never Owned IT In 1st Place

[Trevelyan]

when u buy MS (and most propriatory) s/w 'box' of the shelf what do u think ur paying for?
the CD?, the Menual?, the 'Software'?
well its that little piece of green paper w/ the hologram on.

In short MS dont sell s/w and u dont buy it. MS sells licence for _you_ to use the software, and u cant sell that right on.

If you think you own a copy of win95 (paid or not) you are very much mistaken.

-Trevelyan

Re:Thats Cause U Never Owned IT In 1st Place

[Rude Turnip]

"when u buy MS (and most propriatory) s/w 'box' of the shelf what do u think ur paying for?
the CD?, the Menual?, the 'Software'?
well its that little piece of green paper w/ the hologram on."

In addition to the hologram, I've also bought all of the above. During the turn of the century, a book publisher tried to convince people that they were buying a license to the book and not the actual book. They included little certificates and everything. The Supreme Court said the publisher's claims had no weight...you bought and owned your copy of the book. Software is no different, except for the physical medium.

The fact that Microsoft has more money than God and can bully people does not make their "licensing" claims any more correct. The only right MS retains according to the Constitution and Supreme Court would be copyright, a monopoly on the distribution of the work. All this licensing, data on the CD vs the physical CD stuff is some wishy-washy crap to obscure the truth.

Software Rules for my own country....

[PhrozenF]

When I get a billion dollars after suing Microsoft for those "rattlebox" XBOX controllers....RSI injuries...and that uPNP exploit....I will buy myself an isle and make my own country...

These will be the software rules there..

1. Software patents don't exist.

2. What is Software Piracy? It's All Free! ShareReactor Jindabad...

3. Who said Amazon Owns One-Cick buying...i own it...This is my country..

4. Everyone should submit the ratings about how much "virtual damage" they did to each software company by pirating their software...and I will issue prizes for each $1 Billion...

alas....microsoft will be the first one to invade my country.....

Corporations will own armies in future...(ahem..didnt' they own armies in the past? East india company?)

The problem is not internet connection

[jsse]

Some of you say it's impossible to promote opensource without Internet access. In my opinion it's not their major problem.

Once I saw a documentary about SUN donating an UNIX workstation to an Africa country(don't recall which one, but it's so under-developed) for educational research. The major problem they've got is not being able to connect to internet, their problem is to get steady supply of electricity to boot up the workstation. :)

But the power of desperate users is unlimited! To solve the problem, they built a dynamo from a bicycle. It's bizarre to see how they use the workstation - someone is bicycling very hard while the operator types very very fast(No X, just CLI, sorry!).

I've never complaint my internet connection since. :D

(I'm also aware that South Africa is not like the other under-developed countries in Africa, just a thought. ^_^)

Web page was created using MS word

[Anonymous Coward]

meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"
meta name=ProgId content=Word.Document
meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 10"
meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 10"
link rel=File-List href="opensource_files/filelist.xml"

w00t!

Re:I NEED TO MAKE SOME CASH, SO I WILL POST SPAM H

[geeky-troll]

I must admit this sounds foolproof. Great, thanx for the tip! This may change my life forever. Oh by the way, mr torvalds, the link is still not working right.

This is the wrong way to start...

[rumba]

Hmm. Said document was written with Word 10. What a mess the source is. Flies in the face of the message, a bit, methinks. No dtd, no css, just a mass of formatting. I was hoping to see it was written using docbook standards or some open source tools.

They actually get it!

[Ed Avis]

From the document (my emphasis):

However, government action cannot be the sole objective. Various people and institutions in South Africa, including small and large companies, are already using open software products (notably Linux and associated software tools) precisely because they already have the freedom to do so rather than because they have been prompted by government policy. The bare minimum is to ensure that this freedom is not curtailed by introduction of inappropriate policy.

Yes! That's all we ask!

11 Official Languages

[JackAssPenguin]

I personally think that the most important factor to consider about open source especially KDE and associated programs is the fact that you can quite easily translate them.
Nokia made lots of noise advertising that their phones can display messages in Zulu.

Meanwhile, KDE and Konqueror are very quickly being translated into as many of the 11 official langauges we have here (English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, Sapedi, Sesotho, Swati, Venda, Tsongo,Tswana).

I think the most important part of getting people computer-literate is getting them to be able to use the tools in their own language.

That would be "than" then ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hemos, maybe for the sake of your readers' sanity, you could ask your parents or your neighbour's 8-year old to help you spell the next story correctly ?

You dont think computers are essential!

[Anonymous Coward]

this shows how smart you are, I happen to live in affrica, in Egypt to be precise. We dont eat cars in Egypt, but we need cars to transport. We dont eat wood and bricks, but we need them to make houses and furnitures. We dont eat computers but we definitly can use them to built a more STABLE economy. I am smart enough (and so are the africans) to know that nowadays computers are essential. We dont want to just live, we want to prosper. And maybe have fun coding!

This is good for US

[cpuffer_hammer]

While it may take 5 to 10 years for changes like this to start having an effect. More programmers more practical applications. Free Software grows with the user base (and programmer base).

I think we should be asking what we can do to help. You could say invest in this process.

For instance should we through the FSF or another organization make sure that the local languages are supported and/or that applications that make sense to local people are written. We could also put efforts behind developing an open hardware slandered for development.

So what could/should we be doing to help/invest in this process?

South Africa is not 3rd world

[z_gringo]

South Africa is just as modern as many western European countries, and is about the only country on the Continent with a decent economy and telecom infrastructure.. Sure there is some poverty, but it is hardly a 3rd world country!

Re:South Africa is not 3rd world

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, a country so civilized that a lot of people think that raping a virgin will cure them from aids. http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/africa/12/10/infant. rape/ fix the link yourself.

Conclusion

[interiot]

The conclusion was predictable, I suppose. But their explanations are interesting:

• The trade-off between the proprietary and open approaches amounts to choosing between relying on foreign skills and developing local skills. The proprietary approach requires higher up-front costs and, in many cases, higher long-term costs. The open approach requires a much lower up-front cost (anywhere from zero, to the cost of buying a CD, to avoid a slow Internet download), but requires a bigger investment in a local skills base to enable local software development.
• 
  
  

  In terms of a national strategy, the choice is clear.
  
  

  If South Africa chooses the proprietary route, the cost in many cases will be higher, and much of the expenditure goes out of the country. The country becomes dependent on foreign companies for much of our technological requirements, and hostage to currency fluctuations.
  
  

  If South Africa chooses the open route, the cost will often be lower, and much of the cost will remain in the country. Further, South Africa can break dependence on foreign companies, and potentially become a player in the world software development and software services markets.

Re:Conclusion

[interiot]

Basically, the Middle East is monopolistic oil, and the US is monopolistic software.

Re:Conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at the hundreds of millions of dollars the Canadian gov is spending on MS software per year, a typical government can save oodles of money by embracing Linux and the rest of the Free Software movement. Last year, I saw a Canadian gov order of $400,000,000 for MS Office on Merx, the government tender site. Spending that kind of money for something that crashes on you is obscene.

So, SA is now joining Germany, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia and of course IBM and nobody has ever been fired for buying IBM...

Re:Conclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

And once again... Linux is only free if your time is of no value. It has been shown time and time again that Linux is a more time costly OS than windows.

The minister who claimed this

[Anonymous Coward]

has said a lot less about that theory recently. Since he died of it.

Apartheid

[Anonymous Coward]

New Zealand: Maori have different fishing and voting rights (but you can change what race you are classified as each year if you want to :-)

Fiji: "Communal" voting based on ethnic origin (not allowed to change race after choosing at 18yo), at various stages rigged towards one race.

Australia: In 1960s it was made illegal to hunt aboriginals for sport (!) in Queensland.

UK: until recently, large numbers of people were in power because their parents were (heriditary peers). This system is of course still in place in India (Nehru->Indira->Rajiv->Sonja) and USA (Kennedy,Bush families)

Good comments on intellectual property...

[kenzoid]

The report's section on Intellectual Property Issues is quite good. A bit blunt, but perhaps that's to be commended. Some highlights:

• "These days it is very difficult to write any major piece of software that does not infringe on a number of silly patents that have so far been granted in the US."
• "Patents should not be granted on software and algorithms"

Re:Good comments on intellectual property...

[Anonymous Coward]

In SA, as in many other countries, SW cannot be patented.

SW patents will become less of an issue as the silly patents held by dorks expires. Patents used to hamper the auto industry for decades, but all of that is now almost 100 years in the past.

Scenario....

[Hard_Code]

They also heartily approve when the students explain their plans to design a community resource for guided access to government Web sites. The one concern the students have is that they are often unable to read files downloaded from government sites. The problematic files are in a format that requires proprietary software to read.

Man...didn't you just HATE when you were in high school and you couldn't find a community resource for guided access to government Web site, and that all the files you downloaded were in some strange proprietary format? Man that sucked. I can just see it now - "So, you really think school kids will be building national IT infrastructure for us?" "Sure, sure! Maybe we can get pizza parlor managers and goat herders in on it too!" "Suhweet!"

mumbo jumbo

[Eugene O'Neil]

Is there really any important distinction between "corporate bullying" and "law mumbo jumbo crap"? I think anything that violates common sense as flagarently as this is corporate bullying, whether or not they went through the trouble of making it legal corporate bullying. The real question is, are you violating the law, or is the law violating you?

No geeks, no unix

[Anonymous Coward]

As a sysadmin in Africa, I can tell you the main reason (cracked) MS products get used over the free alternatives - we have no geeks. NT administors are ten a penny, and lets face it, a monkey could configure and maintain an all MS server network. To build linux/*BSD systems you need to have someone who really knows what they're doing.

One possible reason for this: Look at the US, and the millions of computer users. Of these, a percentage are really interested in the things, and go on to look at the unices. Take the same percentage and apply it to the number of people with computers in Africa and you get about 3.

Staffing is the key problem.

Microsoft will allow piracy.

[Gannoc]

Much like they used to do here, if Microsoft realizes that people will start using open source, they'll turn off WPA, give away copies, etc.

Re:Dropped "Linux" because the kernel doesn't matt

[supersnail]

Richard Stallman and the many others who have been involved in the GNU project over the years have:---

Porposed the idea of a free UNIX clone.

Written a first class set of compilers, linkers etc.

Written a first class development environment for the compiler linker etc.

Created tools to support the entire POSIX standard.

Created the legal and political framework for free software.

Linus:

Used all of the above to write the free Linux kernel.

Re:Dropped "Linux" because the kernel doesn't matt

[cburley]

Not to belittle GNU -- but if the Kernel doesn't matter, then why is Stallman so desperate to take credit for / redirect credit away from Linux? And if the Kernel doesn't matter, then I guess HURD doesn't matter, either.

Sheesh, do we have to go through this AGAIN??

First, just where has RMS written that "the Kernel doesn't matter"?

Second, just where is he "so desperate to take credit for" the Linux kernel?

Please. Post links. I want to see where exactly he tries to convince people that the kernel doesn't matter, or that the Linux kernel should be credited to GNU and not to Linus and his team. Please. Even just one link, to something that needs no "explanation" by you of what he "really means".

Meanwhile, the fact remains that Linux does not and, for all practical purposes, cannot exist without GNU. (At least, last I checked, there exists no system on which the Linux kernel runs and can compile itself that is 100% GNU-free. This, despite years now of some people ranting about how they hate RMS and GNU so much that they'll go off and write a GNU replacement so they can use and develop Linux without it.)

However, GNU systems exist, and can compile themselves, without Linux.

This does not mean the kernel "doesn't matter", or that we shouldn't call the Linux kernel "the Linux kernel".

Because, the fact also remains that a huge portion of GNU systems out there are running the Linux kernel. (Maybe most; maybe more than 90%; I don't know. I do know I run it.)

And the fact also remains that, without the unique contributions of the Linux developers and community, GNU would be much more accurately described as a "niche OS" than GNU/Linux could possibly be today.

No question RMS tries (and perhaps too persistently) to help people understand that, just because the whole OS became known as "Linux" does not mean it consists 95% of the kernel, 5% of other stuff that happens to include a bit of GNU.

But while it can certainly be said that, without GNU, Linux itself would have been unlikely, it's also quite clear (to me, anyway) that Linus choosing not only GNU software but the GNU GPL for his kernel brought worldwide use of, and fame regarding, GNU that it would not have achieved, even if the Hurd had come out "on time" according to the original schedule.

Correcting people's misperceptions of these issues does not necessarily constitute disrespecting Linus or Linux, so you'll have to point to quotes by RMS that actually contain such disrespect to convince me.

Absent that, please stop wasting everyone's time and energy making claims you can't back up as a means to attack someone like RMS. There are plenty of other ways to attack him, if you like, using stuff he actually has written, I'm sure.

contract law for fun

[kel-tor]

This isnt true, at the point of purchase, it's a purchase, a transaction, and you have all the rights of first sale. The grey area is clicking the "i agree" to form a binding contract to license the use of the software encoded on the product you already purchased. Having already purchased, for instance, Word, when you form the binding contract by clicking the "i agree" microsoft then is required to give you 'compensation' lacking that a contract is not formed, and clicking 'i agree' means nothing. Something more than the Word that you already purchased for instance, a penny counts. And, since you cannot install the product by clicking 'i do not agree,' clicking 'i agree' is required to access the Word that your bought. This is a form of coersion, and invalidates the contract as well. Not having the ability as one of the members of the contract to negotiate the contract, weakens the contract to the users benefit as well. Also, to form a binding contract, you must be in a sound state of mind. Agreeing to MS's terms is a form of insanity, invalidating the contract. And finally, just install after a few beers, cant form a contract when drunk.

Clarification

[yerricde]

When I wrote "the kernel doesn't matter" in the parent comment, I meant that because the choice of a specific underlying kernel (linux, darwin, hurd, win32, msdos) doesn't affect the validity of Stallman's argument, he was justified in using "GNU" to refer to systems with a GNU userland no matter the kernel.

Re:Dropped "Linux" because the kernel doesn't matt

[Anonymous Coward]

>Porposed the idea of a free UNIX clone.

Should read: proposed another idea of a free unix clone.

>Written a first class development environment for the compiler linker etc.

Should read: took existing Unix toolkits and wrote duplicate implementations that may in some cases work better than the originals.

> Created tools to support the entire POSIX standard.

Should read: took existing Unix toolkits and wrote
duplicate implementations that may in some cases work better than the originals.

> Created the legal and political framework for free software.

Should read: created another legal and political framework for free software

Your missing the point dude ...

[bushboy]

We're talking about people who have no education, next to no food, no electricity, no clean drinking water etc. and your trying to tell me computers are essential to them ?

I can tell you right now, if I was in thier predicament and someone gave me a computer, I'd sell it as soon as possible to buy food for my family.

I mean, get real - put yourself in the shoes (or lack thereof) of an impovrished african living in a war zone or a refugee camp !

What I'm trying to say is that the computers need to be used to assist these countries in attempting to sort out the mess they are in by giving them a faster alternative to problem solving than pen and paper.

I guess, though, judging by the state of most of the african governments, pretty much any funding given to them for open source computer systems will be embezzeled right into the tin-pot dictators back pocket - a sad state of affairs...

America is civilised then ?

[bushboy]

yes, america is so civilised that a lot of people would think that :-

America classrooms are full of kids shooting each other
All the streets are awash with drugs
Cops are corrupt and kill innocents on a regular basis
High speed car chases occur all the time
Racism exists at high levels
Serial killers are everywhere
You can buy a gun without a license

To name but a few examples...

It's easy to point out the bad side of any country - there's evil everywhere...

Re:America is civilised then ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can buy a gun without a license

This is not an example of the 'bad side' of America; it is an example of its greatness.

Short termism

[Anonymous Coward]

has left many countries and companies with problems over the longer term.

My video recorder

[Anonymous Coward]

automagically grabs the time from the airwaves and tunes itself into all stations, complete with names and getting the channels in the correct order, when it turns on. And it was a cheap thing bought from a 24hr supermarket. I imagine Linux users would resent something being so easy to use...

NACI != Government of South Africa

[nealmcb]

Once again the headline is wrong on who is saying what. NACI is more like the US National Academy of Engineering. This report is good news, but the important thing is to get the government to pass legislation to implement the recommendations.

From their home page: The National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI) has been created by legislation [NACI Act of 1997] to advise the Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology of South Africa, and through the Minister, the Ministers Committee and the Cabinet, on the role and contribution of science, mathematics, innovation and technology, including indigenous technologies, in promoting and achieving national objectives. The national objectives are the following: to improve and sustain the quality of life of all South Africans, develop human resources for science and technology, build the economy, and strengthen the country's competitiveness in the international sphere. The South African Government has a need for informed advice on the problems and opportunities facing the country - in no area is this need more salient than in the concern for the stimulation of innovation in the pursuit of the national vision.

Lunatics - sure!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I also "come from a land down under, you better run, you better take cover". That song has a lot of truth in it...

The sooner SA gets off the proprietary SW treadmill, the better. "Power to the people" gets a whole new meaning in open source/free software and that is a country that sure doesn't have money to waste.

Amandla!

Don't let them South Africans take my job

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the only one who KNOWS linux!!!!!

Don't teach anyone else.. they get visa come take my job, all my children go hungry!!!

hahahaha

Can we Learn from This?

[advtech]

We might be able to learn from this example. Along these lines, The Edge Report has posted an interesting article talking about the national security implications of closed source software. While the infiltration of Microsoft by Al Qaeda may have been only a rumor, the article explores a world where this could happen. And guess what? We're living in it. It closes with a powerful statement: "Closed source software vendors, in the name of National Security: Open your Code!".

http://www.edgereport.com/article.php?sid=135

--

Help out?

[Ogerman]

If they need Open Source software, then surely they can help us develop it as well. I'm sure there are folks in the US who would pay SA's for their services of furthering various projects. Then, that's money into their economy which can be used for further improvements.

not quite

[hawk]

>, the second world is defined as being Russia and >it's allied Soviet republics.

time fragmentation problem . . .

1st/2nd world is the Free/Communist split. The second world is nearly gone--the USSR threw in the towel, nad it's subject states ran. The 2nd world is now pretty much limited to N. Korea, Cuba, and Red China . . . and Chinaisheading towards economic freedom which historically leads to political freedom in spite fo the ruling class's attempts to keep control, while Cuba probably veers off the day after Fidel discovers Hell . . .

The 3d world were those that tried to stay out of both the U.S./W. Europe and the Soviet spheres of influence--in some cases successfully plaing both off against the other by threats to go the other way, getting massive goodies from each. Most of these countries were indeed underdeveloped, but that's not really what made them first world (I don't recall any developed countries that didn't either remain free or have a Bolshevik style overthrow of the legitimite government . . .)

hawk

Re:Amusing anecdote: [Continued]

[cburley]

[...Continued From Parent Post.]

Which isn't to say that we don't think our interests are good. Fighting communism, preserving our solidarity, etc. I'll take it as given that we believe we are "in the right". Because I have no doubt that Al Qaeda, from its viewpoint, sees it's own goals as "in the right". In that way, we are similar. It is what we are willing to do to achieve those goals that I see the picture of similarity completed.

Somewhere in there you completely skipped over the degree to which either organization's goals are, actually, "in the right".

I.e. you went right from "I don't think US interests aren't good" to "it's a given that the US believes it is right, and that Al Queda believes it is right" [emphases changed], to jumping directly to an abstract statement of what the respective governments do to project their interests.

In that sense, you can't possibly have "completed" any "picture of similarity". Billy and Marsha both believed they were "in the right", and they both demonstrate they would achieve goals they decided were critical by any means necessary; that hardly "completes the picture of similarity", unless, by that, you mean "consists of all that is similar, the rest being potentially quite different, morally speaking". (Is that what you meant? Doesn't seem like it on the one hand, where you seem to jump from "completes a picture of similarity" to "therefore, they're morally equivalent"; on the other hand, you seem logical enough to understand that a "picture of similarity", even if complete, must be taken into account along with a correspondingly complete "picture of dissimilarity", to which you seem to have paid little attention in this thread, before any judgement on relative morality can possibly be made.)

I claim that anyone who can't make a moral assessment between US interests, as they are generally perceived (promoting individual liberty, freedom of choice, freedom of religion, free trade, etc.), and Al Queda interests (imposing Islam, destroying Israel, the USA, etc.), is not fit to make precise moral judgements regarding the willingness of the respective militaries to project force, the means by which the respective governments operate, and so on.

(And, yes, obviously US interests include "defending the US government and citizens by any means necessary", but that pretty much merely cancels the equivalent interests in Al Queda, that is, to defend its system of human organization and the humans that make it up against external attack. Here, I've canceled out all claims to morality, external goals for the respective organizations, etc., focusing on the pure, unadulterated need for any body or system to defend its content as well as its structure.)

What is clear is that Al Queda would consider failure to murder noncombatants a failure of their overall mission, while the USA has long considered that not to be an indication of the failure of any mission. (Would WWII USA have mourned had it discovered, upon dropping two nukes, that all noncombatants miraculously survived, even though all military/industrial stuff was knocked down? Probably not. But even Chinese journalists visiting the USA on 2001-09-11 cheered when seeing the trade towers collapse, because, like Al Queda, they knew failure to murder noncombatants would be failure to hurt America, hence the choice of office hours to deliver the jets, rather than using a red-eye getting into the area around 5am. That is, I believe the Chinese journalists, and especially Al Queda, were happier that it started at 9am, because more noncombatants would be killed. That the US trades with China and tolerates Cuba, rather than going all-out to destroy their US-hating governments, IMO testifies to a moral sense that is superior to most nations, even though, to me, it borders, at times, on the nearly-suicidal.)

That's a big reason why the US has been so keen on developing precision-guided munitions that can take out military targets without necessarily wiping out neighboring civilian populations. The US could simply not bother, instead using tactical nukes and thermonukes. So, it incurs substantial costs to research, develop, produce, and deploy more-precise munitions, missiles "famous" for being able to take out a reinforced military target while not touching the occupied school or hospital 1/4 mile away, as rough examples.

(Think of how easy it would be, even avoiding the nuke issue, to simply drop daisy-cutter-type bombs anyplace where the US presently might use a precision missile. The daisy cutters are used, of course; in places where the military is sufficiently convinced they're necessary to achieve an objective and there'll be low likelihood of large loss of civilian life, though maybe some loss of friendly combatants, as it -- sadly -- turns out.)

Whereas Al Queda, to achieve its much-less-moral objectives, looks to murder maximum numbers of civilians, despite the fact that doing so will clearly not give it any more security, safety, or room for maneuvering than targeting solely military (and related industry) targets.

In fact, I can recall a CNN (or Headlines News, same thing) report that started out something like this, a couple of months back: "The Bush Administration got bad news in the war effort today, where it has been claimed that a bomb went astray and hit a hospital containing Afghan civilians. It's been a similarly bad day for Al Queda, as it's been confirmed that their #2 leader was killed."

"Similarly bad"?? That might not be an exact quote, but I believe it's a faithful rendition of what the CNN commentator said.

Now, while I believe CNN is happy to downplay Bush(R) successes vis-a-vis an enemy, this illustrates the fact that US citizens are in fact perceived, by CNN, as considering our accidentally killing noncombatants as about as bad for our Commander-in-Chief as our killing our enemy's #2 man is for them.

I mean, how could killing a bunch of Afghan civilians be "bad news" for Bush if it wasn't for the fact that we're not about winning "by any means necessary" in the way you appear to mean -- with nearly-complete disregard for the lives of noncombatants?

Let me tell you, if Al Queda managed to kill Dick Cheney, that wouldn't run, as a story on Al Jazeera TV, on an equal basis to them accidentally killing an American journalist: "Bad news for Al Queda, they accidentally killed an American journalist; similarly bad news for America, Al Queda killed their Vice President". That sort of report would be inconceivable anywhere in all of Islam, China, and many other corners of the world, I'm pretty sure.

(Still sticking to your moral equivalence claim?)

And, another of my original points stands: you are still alive, despite our having this discussion. You would not be alive, being in Al Queda (or Taliban) territory, having the same kind of discussion. (So much for the Ashcroft Threat you've talked about, eh?)

Not only does this upset your moral-equivalency apple cart, it illustrates the fact that your preaching is fundamentally about discouraging America from defending herself, since it won't have anything but a positive effect on Al Queda and its friends. (I don't care that you claim to ultimately agree with the need to go to war -- your agreement with that decision is, relative to your other talk, insignificant, so the weight of your verbeage is, as far as I can see, to demonize America.)

In other words, you're little different from the townsfolk who trash Marsha over the years to favor Tina's interests in enslaving the population, ultimating in the needless murder of Marsha. That you might say, in private, "oh, hey, I happen to agree Marsha needed to act" does not get you off the hook for the effects your voluminous preaching in the other direction has had.

This is, of course, a conclusion you will not agree with, nor will you any time soon even if you decide to give it due consideration. It took me a long time, myself, and I was a cynic to begin with. But let me try to support it.

I started with the fact that there was a situation in which we decided to use not one, but two nuclear weapons. Targeted at civilians. No "accidental" death here. Justification is not important to argue for or against, because that would only establish the necessary modifier to my "any means". I personally (meaning from my viewpoint) do not think that it was necessary, but I can understand that from the viewpoint of the decision makers of the time it may have seemed so.

Right, it might not have seemed necessary, but the devastation of it was sufficient to convince Americans, believing in the importance of morality, to not have to use nukes again, despite plenty of opportunities to do so -- opportunities sufficiently tempting that few people doubt they would have been used, had the population been at the moral level of pre-WWII Germany or Japan, or present-day Al Queda.

(Keep in mind, American inattention to the national stage is clearly what typical prompts the more severe wars in which the US inflicts significant casualties. While that may seem to draw attention to Democratic presidents -- FDR, JFK, LBJ, and Clinton come to mind, allowing for realities regarding genuine opportunity to do things better -- it also happened to George H.W. Bush, whose ambassador to Iraq, I think it was, managed to completely confuse the issue and convince Iraq the US wouldn't mind much if it invaded Kuwait. The issue is not so much Democratic Presidents, though I do believe we have enough evidence that "character counts" to dispense with continuing that argument any longer; it's with a population that too-often decides to distract its government, asking for candy and other handouts, when it should be encouraged to simply keep its eye on the road and firm hand on the wheel, leaving the entertaining of children to others. To wit: the US government should simply defend our national interests, our "homeland", secure the rule of law within it, and maybe ensure a reasonably stable national currency; we, the citizens, can take care of the rest -- education, the handouts, the environmental issues, preventing drug use, encouraging abstinence, and so on. Heck, read Biden's speech on 2001-09-10 to get an idea of just how chillingly inalert our Congressional leaders were to the threat of exactly what happened within 24 hours -- a threat of which we were not entirely unaware, when you take into account all sort of credible sources and prior, published events, that simply didn't get enough attention in an overly-busy, busybody government.)

And, of course, the American public had little general awareness, or input into, nuking Japan at that time. It had put into place a military that was generally morally superior (compare treatment of POWs in USA vs. Japan as just one example), if not militarily superior, but wasn't permitted, for obvious reasons, fine-grained control over things like the Manhattan project.

Having survived WWII, Americans had, and took, the opportunity to learn and practice an improved (if only slightly) morality.

Having been defeated in WWII, the surviving Japanese were, basically, forced to better approximate Western-style morality, ultimately competing quite strongly with the US on economic terms (remember the "Japan is taking over the US" scares of the '80s, which we solved by fine-tuning our economy, not dropping more nukes on them?). For example, the Japanese are much better at following international rule of law than they were back in the '30s, I'd guess.

The upshot: the winner being morally superior in the first place, and helping rebuild the loser according to an improved moral code, the world because a substantially safer and more moral place.

That might have happened had the nukes not been dropped, but we'll never know, and if Japan had won, or the situation stalemated, the opportunities for moral progress might have been severely depleted or lost.

Now, do you know of any Al Queda people who are advocating a sort of Marshall Plan for the NYC Trade Towers, the way so many people in the West, immediately after 09-11, started talking about the importance of "rebuilding Afghanistan after the war", as we did Japan and Germany, even though no attacks on Afghanistan had yet even been made in response to 09-11?

"Moral equivalence", you say?

Now I fast-forward to post-Vietnam, not because of a lack of interesting data points, but because I wish to keep this short and get to the important part to show that my hypothesis applies recently, not just half a century ago.

You said that you thought that we had learned our lesson from Vietnam. And indeed we have. We have learned that it's better to use a proxy to fight our wars for us. The public reaction is less severe when it comes to the death of some other country's soldiers. It is easier to conceal the actions of a proxy, and thus prevent public reaction. It makes it possible to maneuver around political realities that would prevent us from dircetly intervening. And atrocities of the kind committed by our own soldiers in Vietnam achieve all of the above benefits as well. With a proxy, while your "means" are limited greatly by not being able to use your own forces, they are in other ways greatly liberated.

You don't mention the other important point: we leave it to the proxy to decide how, and whether, to fight. We left it up to Iraqis to decide whether and how to topple Hussein; they failed to do so, yet we haven't nuked Baghdad.

The wonderful thing about this kind of "proxy battle" is that it allows us to tolerate failures to achieve our missions, because, by using proxies, we've already basically agreed it isn't important enough for a "DIY" approach.

Of course, most other substantial nations and belief-systems use proxies as well, so I hardly see it as a count against American morality anyway.

In a sense, the USA has allowed itself to be used as a proxy for international organizations such as the UN and NATO. I don't consider this to be prima fascia evidence of immorality on the part of those organizations. It isn't clear to me why you do.

I do see reasons to avoid the use of proxies. As examples, doing so implies lower visibility regarding the viability of the conflict, less control of the moral quality of the conflict, and so on, some of which you seem to care highly about.

But it isn't the job of the US to ensure that any enemy that an enemy of ours faces will meet our own moral code. We can try to help that happen, and we can (and sometimes do) help bring people up on charges who violate it afterwards.

Ultimately, though, war is hell, and the existence of the US military as well as our ability to form coalitions, use proxies, and so on, without being willing, certainly without being able, to guarantee a certain moral quality to "our" side, probably contributes more to a moral world than an immoral one.

And there are serious problems with not using proxies -- especially local, self-interested combatants -- in certain situations. Certain cultures do not appreciate being helped out very much (most of Islam fits this description, apparently), especially after their desires are fulfilled. Giving them a strong role in bringing about victory is important, as is ensuring they really want victory, and set reasonable conditions for it, by having them fight for it, meaning they, not some alien force (the US military), must bear the brunt of fulfilling their desires.

So while I accept that there are moral considerations to be made when it comes to the use of proxies, I do not see that it is immoral, or moral, by using them per se.

(Clearly, if we undertook as many military campaigns without proxies as we presently do both with and without them, we'd have to be a significantly stronger occupying nation, literally expansionist, throughout the world. So arguing for disuse of proxies amounts to arguing to not going to war in certain circumstances, without regard to issues of national security -- e.g. survivability.)

Central America in the 80's is a perfect example. Rather than dispose of unfavorable governments ourself, we paid for and directed rebellions against them. Nicaragua was such a case. They had overthrown a fascist regime that was created and supported by our own government, and proceded to do very well for themselves without our help, and without giving in to our business interests. They were starting to show communist tendencies, and the opposing groups that inevitably appeared were the tools by which we exercised our interests.

Just as we were the tools by which they exercised theirs.

(And, of course, Congressional Democrats, Soviet Communists, and Central American Communists happily used each other as tools, proxies, and so on. You say "they were starting to show communist tendencies", a half-truth very typical of leftists; that was hardly spontaneous.)

You see, Regan was trying to free hostages, which is surely a noble cause by itself, even if the method did make us war profiteers by selling weapons to both sides of a war at the same time. But that wasn't the extent of it. The profits of this war profiteering went to fund the Contras, since Congress had dropped support. Thus what had at first seemed like merely breaking the law and our stated policy on terrorism to save hostages ended up being just the means for us to further our interests in Central America.

Indeed, that's behavior of highly questionable morality (I'd say it was, on its own, somewhat immoral, since it went against the rule of law, such as it was, in the pertinent branches of US government).

But, it was done in counterpoint to similarly questionable behavior (again, frankly, immoral) on the part of Communists and Congressional Democrats at the time. The things Congressional Democrats wrote to each other, to newspapers, to Ortega, and so on, are hilarious, yet frightening in context, to read. Kinda like reading what Lenin, who is generally (and incorrectly) not regarded as a willing mass-murderer, said and wrote -- when you consider the impact on the ground of what is being written, promoted, and projected, it's quite chilling.

Remember, these are many of the same people who later called the bursting-in of INS agents, who pointed assault weapons at innocent, poor, right-wing Christians, including little Elian Gonzalez, and removed him from his family's house at 5am, without any court order having been made forcing the executive branch to do that, a "rescue". Right, a "rescue". From what? Hmm, whatever required him to be "rescued" like that didn't end up in any charges against his family that I'm aware of, so why the gunplay?

I've learned to read between the lines. When the media uses a word like "rescue", it often means "this is something we like", and when it says "assault", it often means "this is something we don't like", even though the thing itself could be fundamentally the same. You've used this tactic occasionally yourself in this thread ("near Billy" vs. "Marsha burst in"), so you know what I mean.

So, when you read letters of support to Daniel Ortega, and find out just what he was doing that they were supporting, and what that meant to people striving to preserve their individual rights and freedom, you'll understand why I don't exactly see Reagan (and the Executive Branch under his "command") as the "bad guy" compared to all that was going on at the time.

(That doesn't let the USA off the hook, since there was some seriously bad stuff going on at the behest, even applause, of many elected to Congress.)

Why you choose to stop your research and/or "testimony" here exactly at that point that you're able to indict the USA, especially Republican leaders, as sharing responsibility to evils committed by others, rather than explore further to understand who and what might, in a similar fashion, share responsibility for those evils, is something you might wish to address.

Not that this was the only problem with the Contras. Outside of money from arms sales to Iran, the Contras were also funded by drug money, with the coordination and cooperation of the CIA. Massive amounts of cocaine entered this country, starting the boom of that and derivative drugs in the US. It is conspicuous in the detail that the CIA doesn't deny this, but merely asserts that an investigation of their financial records showed no evidence. That documents in the public record would contradict the former statement might explain why.

Yep, more immorality, of the sort hidden from the public compared to the fairly open, yet immoral, behavior of the other side of the aisle -- which, by the way, was, at the time, generally more favorable to widespread use of drugs to "have a good time", in that an inner-city youth born into a Republican family and embracing Republican policies would perhaps have been less likely to take up smoking crack than his friends.

(Just like the complaints a few years back that "crack cocaine use gets higher penalties than regular cocaine, which means the law is racist", which turned out to really be a case of inner-city legislators getting the stiff sentences and low tolerance they had asked for in the first place, when the crack epidemic started spiraling out of control. Why didn't they insist on similar treatment of regular cocaine? Because, apparently, it wasn't in their local interest at the time, which is quite understandable.)

The Contras themselves engaged in actions that could be called terroristic. They didn't restrict themselves to military targets, by any means. And this wasn't just the unfortunate action of our tool -- they received training in many of these activities by us. Our field training manuals on interrogation were somewhat disturbing in that they argued against -direct- physical torture simply because it is ineffective -- recommending instead indirect physical pain, and mental pain. Torture, assassination, hired death squads. Is this the action of a morally superior government, or of one that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve its goals?

Morally superior to what, since we've both been talking about equations, rather than some kind of ideal standard? The Soviet Communist government?

Where would you rather have been a "political prisoner" during the '60s, '70s, or '80s -- the USA, or the USSR?

Look at the clearest examples of free vs. Communist splits that we had at the time, in terms of treatment of political prisoners, economic progress, and so on: East vs. West Germany; North vs. South Korea; China vs. Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Is it any wonder why some might decide it's worth breaking a few eggs to make an omelette, given that the enemy has a policy of eradicating chickens once they're in power?

Clearly we weren't doing whatever it takes back then, since we could have done so much more, if we didn't give jack squat about civilians, noncombatants, etc.

And, clearly, a fair number (probably not enough) have been left with a bad taste in their mouth over that whole shady episode to reign in the CIA since then. That's moral improvement in action.

(Some might say it was reigned in "too much", leading to 2001-09-11. I sure don't know. I prefer morality to reign, of course, but am not so swift to condemn those who sacrifice their own morality to preserve my freedom and/or life down the road.)

And of course all of this comes along with rampant concealment and manipulation of information. Clearly, public reaction can be manipulated both in extend and even existence, and thus increase those means which are available for achieving ends.

Yup, it was pretty bad all around, though at least it had the "moral excuse" of protecting US interests, not just in the narrow sense of protecting national security, but in the larger sense of projecting forcibly the idea that individuals should have the freedom to choose their own jobs, set their own wages, trade with whomever they choose, and so on.

All sorts of similar rampant concealment and manipulation of information was hardly a thing of the past by 1993, though: public reaction was clearly manipulated in response to the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, an episode that didn't involve the protection of any credible national or moral interest, despite all sorts of claims (e.g. of Executive Privilege) to the contrary -- a torturing of the law that would have been better deployed in the taking, rather than refusing, of various reported opportunities to "get" Usama bin Laden before 09-11.

So, while I might not react as strongly as you to the Iran/Contra affair, I agree with the general thrust that a government organization, even the USA's, cannot be trusted to have a general "sense of goodness".

When Iraq invaded Kuwait, there was no proxy to fight for us. But that was fine, because political reality was such that we could engage them ourselves, with lots of help even. Whatever humanitarian reasons might have been given as motivations -- much like the saving of starving Afghans -- was so much crap, as we ignored Iraq's actions against the Kurds even as we supplied them with more weapons for their war with Iran.

Again, another moral failing of our government, and our nation's people clearly have lurched hither and yon in response to that sort of thing (Somalia being basically a media-inspired debacle, for example).

But we could have done much worse, but didn't, because humanitarian reasons were not "so much crap", they were just weighted, sometimes too lightly, in the scale with other things we considered important at the time. (You talk about arming Iraq against Iran as if that situation existed in a vacuum. It didn't. Who was USSR's proxy in the Middle East at the time? Yet you focus on our connection with Iraq. I can't think offhand of a mess the US has gotten into recently that doesn't have earlier roots in Communist oppression, though I'm sure there must be a few. If you haven't read "The Black Book of Communism", you probably should; from what I've read about it, it brings to light many important realities of 20th Century politics, and it wasn't written by a bunch of right-wing wackos, either.)

We try to do the right thing, but as a superpower of 250 million people still not fully interconnected, and a mass media that was (especially then) pretty much committed to one particular political ideology, it's understandable, to me anyway, why "the right thing" wasn't done in every single instance.

On the whole, though, of the few nations that have proven willing and able to project power to defend internationally moral concepts, I can't think of one offhand that is more moral, throughout comparable history, than the USA.

And "projecting power" is an important component to me. Given a hypothetical situation where I'm in a world with 100 other people, and I can conduct myself such that I'll either have 97 friends and 3 enemies, or 97 enemies and 3 friends, I'd choose the former, all else being equal.

But, often, all else is not equal. If, in that scenario, I know that the 97 friends I might have are unwilling to take risks to defend me against my 3 enemies, who are very vigorous in projecting their power, then I'd be a fool to choose that option, since I'd surely end up dead.

Instead, I'd choose to make those 3 friends, knowing they'd be much better at defending me against 97 "morally lazy" enemies, who'll do little more than resent me and talk about me behind my back. My odds of surviving are simply higher in that scenario.

So popular (or "democratic") politics isn't my bag, practical politics being much more interesting to me.

Which is why, on a practical level, I don't care a whole lot whether the USA is morally perfect, since I know it'll do a much better job protecting me than Al Queda, while imposing so much less on me than Al Queda or even, say, the European Union or China might.

And speaking of ignoring, despite our vow of "Never Again", our response to genocide has demonstrated that our intent is anything other than humanitarian. If there is one thing anyone in this century can agree on morally, it is that genocide represents one of the greatest evils imagineable. Yet when it happens in countries that are not of national interest, it is ignored by our Vietnam-wisened government. A pathetic bombing cannot compare to what happened in Rwanda, or in Bosnia. We never intervened in Rwanda, and what little action we took in Bosnia may have actually made it worse. In this case, our interest was to not get involved, and this was done by whatever method made this politically feasible. You blame Clinton for lying about getting his winky wet? What about lying about genocide and ethnic cleansing? Claiming ignorance so that we wouldn't have to get involved?

What about it indeed? I agree with you almost wholeheartedly.

First of all, though, "never again" is, to my knowledge, not a statement taken by our government, much less our military, regarding genocide. Maybe I'm missing something?

(Okay, maybe Clinton, panderer that he was and is, joined that call as President? But if he did, who really took him seriously -- given that he wasn't exactly advocating beefing up the US military sufficiently to take on any threat of genocide occurring anywhere in the world anytime in the future? Remember, Clinton got elected, in 1992, on a platform that included, as a fundamental component, the idea that "it's the economy, stupid" and that George H. W. Bush had attended too much to international matters.)

My recollection of "never again", as a phrase, is that it pertains more to the notion that moral people, especially of the Judeo-Christian tradition, should never again remain silent in the face of genocide, as happened in WWII.

I'm unaware of any significant commitment to act, militarily, in its face. Seems to be something the UN, not the US, would commit to, anyway, but I wouldn't bet my life on the UN even if it did so commit.

Second, I find the "never again" philosophy to be one of the things that favors my argument for moral superiority of the USA over Al Queda (or most any other predominantly Muslim nation), because it courses through our culture far more than it does through Islam, which seems to have, on its side, "destroy Israel" and "America is Satan" to roughly the same degree of combination of breadth (in population) and depth (of effect on government policies).

In short: AMERICA and THE WEST: "NEVER AGAIN"; AL QUEDA and ISLAMIC ARABIA: "ANYTIME NOW". An exaggeration in both cases, of course.

But the events in Rwanda and Bosnia weren't exactly precipitated by us -- certainly not to the degree you seem to imply by interpreting our "intent" in those situations. Why hold the US to a standard that, basically, no other nations chose to meet at that time -- nations that could just as easily, or even more easily (due to being closer), could have met?

Meanwhile, the US has good reason to focus on doing the Big Things that it, and only it, can do, as it did in resisting the expansionist, evil empire called the USSR. Becoming a busybody and interfering in every backwater where "bad things are happening", something we've tried here and there, seems to sew little but resentment, and rarely actually improves things substantially enough to have made the exercise worthwhile. (Which is part of why I think Bush, rather than Gore, was elected; many people assumed Gore would continue the kind of big-picture-avoiding, photo-op-preferring "military actions" that characterized the Clinton era, with little in the way of real, long-term victories to point to.)

"By any means necessary" was a phrase Malcom X could have easily borrowed from the CIA handbook. We have done things that we would like people to believe only countries like China would do. We do these things, and we conceal them, lie about them, and justify them because of "national security". Our interests.

Exactly what things do we, the USA, do, comparable to torturing people for being Christians, as has recently been done not only in China, but in Cuba?

But, really, I agree "by any means necessary" is a phrase that could be borrowed -- except, for my part, from the handbook of those willing to overlook any human-rights violation when its committed by regimes considered "commie-friendly", like Castro's.

Really, when I look at the numbers of innocents murdered, I don't get nearly as concerned about right-wing despots (numbers typically reach no higher than the thousands) as left-wing ones (where we're talking millions of murdered). The latter get a pass in the mass media, and get little in the way of the cold, hard looks about how they actually conduct themselves compared to the former.

In fact, the Left has shown itself to be highly skilled at pursuing a strategy of focusing public and press attention on the gnats of right-wing tyranny precisely so it can distract people from the camels of left-wing tyranny. Not a surprising choice for an amoral orthodoxy, since one of the alternatives would be to commit to a course of truly and thoroughly apologizing for having served as apologists for left-wing despots throughout the 20th Century, apology they seem to have generally chosen to continue, to the extent they speak of those sins at all.

Ensuring that any connection between a major evil and a right-wing idea or person is stressed, while the connection to a left-wing idea is ignored (e.g. how many times, when the media talks about the internment of American Japanese during WWII, do they mention FDR?); and actively seeking to shut down, or at least disrupt, the ability of right-wing media outlets to continue their work, while claiming about "free speech" to protect whatever they might say through theirs; these also are well-documented tactics of the Left.

(That might explain why, apparently, right-wing US political organizations were audited by the Clinton-era IRS at a much higher rate than left-wing ones. "By any means necessary" indeed. But the media didn't generally pick up on it, it seems.)

But, my semi-depression at how gullible America seemed, or how willing it seemed to tolerate open, plain evil as the Clinton era unfolded, has given away to the realization that America is showing signs it has learned from that debacle, is willing to continue learning, and is willing to act on that knowledge.

(E.g. consider the change in attitude towards individual responsibility for one's own security: we've gone from a pro-gun-control culture so strong we basically applauded the Waco tragedy, to passengers on airlines personally risking themselves to subdue suspected terrorists, rather than just passively waiting for Big Daddy Government to do all the nasty stuff for them.)

And as much as you seem to think your concerns about Iran-Contra and other right-wing debacles is so unique, I promise you there are lots of people -- left-wing and right -- who have also been deeply concerned, who have made individual accountability and willingness to take responsibility higher priorities in assessing the character of potential leaders, etc.

So I believe both those ends of the issues illustrate moral progress on the part of the populace.

(You never seem to acknowledge the importance of allowing for some reasonable rate of moral growth on the part of a person, or at least a nation. Is that assessment correct? If so, do you really believe a person or nation, having committed any evil, must therefore be destroyed, that forgiveness is not a factor in a valid system of morality? By whom is this judgement to be delivered, without them, in turn, becoming evil and thus requiring destruction, may I ask? What is your judicial philosophy regarding these issues?)

But, just as we learn how to deal with the past, new challenges come up (like 09-11), testing our ability to more rapidly respond in more practical, yet also more moral, ways.

(It's hardly a straight, or even consistently upward, line, but the trend has been, over the last 15 years or so, generally upward, in the areas I believe I can assess reasonably well. I consider some well-known conservative authors, writing about moral decay in our society, to be somewhat behind the curve, though still helpful in alerting us to potential moral dangers.)

Willing to achieve its goals by any means necessary, limited only by political reality, capability, and public reaction. Am I talking about the US or Al Qaeda? I'm talking about both. Al Qaeda is operating within grossly different parameters of political reality, capability, and public reaction. These differences are the source of the conceptual problem of seeing the two groups as "the same", but that is only a matter of situation, of "viewpoint" not intent. The intent is the same -- what I want, no matter what. It is my conclusion that were the U.S. government to have the same limiting parameters as Al Qaeda, its actions would be no different. Thus, they are morally equivalent.

Again, here you seem to morally equate "what I want", as if what the average American wants is morally equivalent to what the average Al Queda wants. Is that correct? So, if I'm a typical American, and want you to flourish and find your own way, as long as you don't tread on my freedoms; and a typical Al Queda wants you to convert to Islam and recognize him as your leader; then, in your view, these two "wants" are "morally equivalent"?

Are you saying that if the US military was in the hands of Islamic extremists, instead of being in the hands of a predominantly Judeo-Christian population, it'd behave identically to Al Queda? If so, what do you mean by that -- that it'd still confine itself to taking down office buildings, or that it'd use nukes to blackmail the US into adopting Islam, after perhaps nuking a US city or two?

Guess I still can't figure out what you're saying, since I don't accept your apparent premise that governments have any morality, even as an attribute, absent the populations that you apparently dismiss, for purposes of your equation, as "political reality".

Maybe you should define what you mean as "government", with what you call "political realities" and "public response" removed.

So, please tell me, what exactly keeps the George Bush, who you presumably believe is morally equivalent to Usama bin Laden, from simply nuking Baghdad tomorrow? He could clearly do it, and he doesn't seem to care about being President enough to be concerned with possible impeachment afterwards. He's already targeted by assassins, obviously, and the USA is too committed to the rule of law to try and convict him as a criminal, since he'd be acting in his role as President. Plus, just like you and I believe Clinton did, he could quite easily gin up a wag-the-dog scenario sufficient to convince Americans that he probably had a good-enough reason to nuke the place, such that we can't treat him as a war criminal.

(My answer is that it comes from his innate moral code, which includes the idea that even Iraqi citizens who gather in the streets to shout "America is Satan", "Kill Bush", or whatever, deserve to live, and that his responsibility as President includes representing that same kind of morality as expressed by the citizens who elected him. I think he was very sincere when, nearly in tears, he said "I'm a loving guy, but I have a job to do", shortly after 09-11, and that he represented a more moral choice than Mr. "I did not have sex with that woman" or Mr. "No controlling legal authority", though I recognize that more Americans actually voted for the latter over Bush in 2000, an example of our system of governance -- election law -- overriding pure democracy, with, IMO, a slightly more moral outcome on the whole, though not through any morality inherent in the system that I'm aware of.)

And, from my viewpoint, equally reprehensible.

But your viewpoint is, in my opinion, simply inadequate to make such assessments, given how thoroughly you're willing to explore the excuses for one side while being unwilling to explore the same issues to the corresponding depth for the other. I'm not sure whose vewpoint is adequate to make such assessments, offhand. Complexity being the tough nut we're really trying to crack here, it seems to me the situation, especially to the depth you seem willing to explore it at any point, is vastly more complex than a single person can comprehend sufficiently to render final moral judgements.

So now you probably think I'm a loon. That's fine. Is it because my analysis of events is flawed? Or because you don't believe the events I describe transpired? The former may be true, or it may just depend on my own subjectivity. The latter... Well, that's really the triumph of our government. They can release documents proving what I've said, readily available under the FOIA, and people still don't believe it.

I think your analysis of events is, event by event, fine. I think it's clear you can't manage the Big Picture -- you've had plenty of trouble managing just this discussion without losing your cookies, so to speak! And I think it's incredibly difficult for any one to manage that Big Picture, which is why we have branches of government, individual offices, rules of law, a huge array of conflicting moral codes, and so on, instead of One World King who simply orders everyone around.

Again, until you've thoroughly put into practice what you claim to believe, and do so long enough for it to become virtually habitual (a worthwhile exercise, I promise you), until you can see how easy or hard it is to live life according to your own moral code while facing the dangers of living a "normal life" that parallels what the US government has to deal with in the world, you really have little basis on which to judge that government, though you can (and perhaps should) assess individual actions on a case-by-case basis.

Another point: the US government, being of the people, is evolving morally, probably more swiftly than you are at times. By the time you think you've figured out how it'd respond to a situation, it has probably changed enough to respond differently.

(E.g. did you predict that Bush would decide to treat Taliban prisoners at Gitmo under the Geneva Convention, as distinguished from how he'd treat Al Queda? Based on your moral-equivalency argument, I find it hard to believe you'd have predicted that, since Al Queda has a proven record of treating prisoners, not to mention its own people when they consider surrendering to the US, vastly worse than anyone has been treated at Gitmo in decades.)

By the way, there is one question you haven't asked, though it's probably because you think you know the answer. You never asked me if I thought we should have attacked Afghanistan, even though we all know civilians would die. If you had asked, I would have said "I can't see what else we can do... So yes."

I don't think you should draw any moral conclusions from that belief. Actually, I proposed a radically different, much more peaceful, yet practical, solution, but nobody (except my wife) cared about it, which kinda surprised me. But, yeah, I too couldn't see that the US government could continue to sit idly by and let Al Queda have free reign in Afghanistan and elsewhere, which would clearly ultimate in taking possession of nuclear missiles down the road; that would have been an abrogation of its collective "office", something Americans are, IMO, not yet morally prepared to accept in a positive way.

In the story of David v. Goliath, it's notable that David's response to having had the typical soldier's army put on is to take it off, saying "I haven't proved this works for me; I've proven that God will deliver me from the bear and the lion", because that suggests the need to prove one's own morality -- one's own reliance on God, or the law of nature, whatever it's called -- in one's own life experiences, before trying to transfer it to larger-scale venues involving millions of people.

It's also notable that he didn't then turn around and tell all his fellow soldiers that they, too, must take off their armour and "trust in God". Perhaps his simple humility prevented him? Perhaps he understood that they trusted in armour, and would be better served by his simply demonstrating the effectiveness of his comparatively-simple reliance on God than by ordering them about as his moral inferiors?

Similarly, Christ Jesus' parable of the one, five, and ten "talents" suggests the importance of being faithful to the simple, even trivial, things in one's life, before being fit to take on the larger-scale issues.

I've been striving (with some interesting challenges along the way) to put into practice my own morality -- which probably doesn't differ significantly from yours -- in the direct areas of my life, rather than focus as much as I used to on contributing to human organizations like churches and governments in the belief that they will deliver me from the "paw of the bear and the lion" and faithfully forward my morality on my behalf.

As I learn and demonstrate what does and doesn't work, I become more willing to "extend my tent", but remain humbly grateful for those who, while sometimes acting in the short-term against what I consider the strictly correct moral code, nevertheless enable me, as a living, breathing human being striving to be moral, to continue breathing, by defending my freedoms and rights to do so.

Necessity is a horrible thing.

What a mean thing to say about someone's mother! ("Invention", y'see. ;-)

You are ignorant of history -- even recent -- and actions taken by your own country.

Thanks for trying to educate me (NOT!!).

Thanks for making it sound like it's my fucking job! Educate yourself. I'm not your tutor.

Generally, in forums where scientific-sounding assertions are made, e.g. yours of moral equivalence, the burden of providing evidence falls upon the one making the assertion.

And it strikes me as rather amazing that someone would assume that I must be ignorant of events of the sort you describe above, simply because we've come to different conclusions regarding the morality of an entire nation. Do you really believe I'm either under 25 years old, or that I was in a cave throughout the 1980s? The things you describe above were widely reported by the mass media, including live broadcasts of Congressional hearings. And while I haven't consistently sought out such information throughout my adult life, I read (aloud, as it happens) the book containing Nixon's secretly-recorded tapes shortly after it was published in the mid-1970s.

In fact, it occurs to me that you might yourself be so young that you don't realize most Republicans over about, say, 35 years old are highly unlikely to assume anything their party, or its leaders, do must be "right". "We" went through the Nixon thing, we dealt with it, we didn't devote massive amounts of PR, money, and energy defending it, distracting people from it, and so on, over a large period of time -- certainly nothing like what went on, and continues to go on, to defend Clinton on the Democratic side.

And maybe the fact that we're pretty clear-headed about the evils committed against the rule of law, separation of branches of government, and so on, even though they occurred under a Republican president, makes us more able to honestly and fairly assess what went on under Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and go on under Bush, without getting quite so caught up in political orthodoxy, which, on the other hand, seems to be a requirement for being a Democrat wishing to be widely regarded as supportive of the party, either in the party or in the media.

But telling me I'm ignorant of history was a silly thing anyway, since you, too, are ignorant of history -- even recent -- and actions taken by your country.

I can say that because it's obvious that nobody can possibly not be ignorant of such things, to some degree, even in a comparatively open society like ours (never mind the things done in a closed society like the USSR, things which factored greatly in what the US government did from the 1940s through the 1990s).

Any moral code can only be worthwhile and practical if it takes the reality of ever-incompete knowledge into account.

That's why I found it so annoying that you'd constantly introduce a trickle of you-forgot-to-consider-this-type factoids into what started out as a discussion of a pretty straightforward moral equation.

If your moral code was at all useful, you'd be able to confidently make hypothetical judgements about hypothetical situations without having to first complicate things. Your insistence on providing backstories, dredging up history recent and ancient, suggests not that you are more knowledgeable about the pertinent moral facts so much as that your morality depends on perfect, objective knowledge, or at least that your moral code includes the notion that your moral judgement is superior to someone else's merely because you possess more facts about a situation.

(This is a repeating theme in the left-vs.-right debates: "She got pregnant out of wedlock, that's wrong." "But she's from a poor family." "It's still wrong." "But she's in charge of her own body." "Still wrong." "She had a lot of peer pressure to deal with, you know." "Still wrong." "Her boyfriend kept pressuring her." "Still wrong." "Condoms aren't readily available to her." "Still wrong." "Marriage is a patriarchical straitjacket for women." "Still wrong." "Society should care for her and her baby." "Still wrong." The Left tends to provide a neverending stream of "factoids", which I find stem from the chaotic, almost fractal, nature of life, in which, indeed, nothing is ever black or white; but, to the Left, off-white can be blacker than jet black and vice versa, as long as you finally agree that they, not any objective moral code, make the judgements, by first granting it the right to guide which factoids are worth introducing, second granting it the right to decide their weight in the equation, and third granting it the right to choose the equation and change it anytime they want. Meanwhile, "Still wrong" is more likely to personally attend to the immediate moral needs of mother and child, while excuse-maker, really interested only in pushing the socialism agenda, moves on to the next political hot-button topic; her compassion plays out largely by taxing the rich and doling it out to those she favors, like the unwed mother, who would then raise chidren less able to secure and maintain moral households for their children, as history has shown.)

And the fact that you willfully introduce factoids that solely support your position without admitting that there might be more to know (and, frankly, there always is), means I simply can't trust you to present the truth, even in cases where you in fact know it, but find it unsupportive of your rhetoric at the time.

Further, the more weight you give to obscure or ancient details, the more you have to recognize that, since you don't know all such details, any conclusions you come to are invalid. Again, that reflects the increased chaos of the analysis you embrace: if you instead agree to restrict yourself to here-and-now, black-and-white-type issues, you can come to more reasonable conclusions, logically speaking.

(The trick is having a filter that's correct enough to make up for the loss of detailed information; the Right tends to oversimplify for its own sake, in effect tossing the baby out with the bathwater in too many cases, e.g. in the War on Drugs, which has moral underpinnings, but which I think may be oversimplified, on the whole, to the point of immorality.)

But I'll throw you a bone. Outside of Google, a good place to start is [...]

I'll pass on that, until and unless somebody whose commitment to presenting the truth, to approximating objective reality, tells me it's worth reading. I've learned the futility of trying to "know it all" myself, which, obviously, means I've had to become humble about pronouncing moral equivalency of democratic republics like the USA and terrorist organizations like Al Queda.